| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | The Visionary | | By William Robert Spencer (1770–1834) |
| | | WHEN midnight o’er the moonless skies | |
| Her pall of transient death has spread, | |
| When mortals sleep, when spectres rise, | |
| And nought is wakeful but the dead! | |
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| No bloodless shape my way pursues, | 5 |
| No sheeted ghost my couch annoys, | |
| Visions more sad my fancy views, | |
| Visions of long departed joys! | |
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| The shade of youthful Hope is there, | |
| That linger’d long, and latest died: | 10 |
| Ambition all dissolved to air, | |
| With phantom honours at her side. | |
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| What empty shadows glimmer nigh! | |
| They once were Friendship, Truth, and Love! | |
| Oh! die to thought, to memory die, | 15 |
| Since lifeless to my heart ye prove! | | | | |
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