| |
| WHILE sauntering through the crowded street, | |
| Some half-remembered face I meet, | |
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| Albeit upon no mortal shore | |
| That face, methinks, has smiled before. | |
| |
| Lost in a gay and festal throng, | 5 |
| I tremble at some tender song,— | |
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| Set to an air whose golden bars | |
| I must have heard in other stars. | |
| |
| In sacred aisles I pause to share | |
| The blessings of a priestly prayer,— | 10 |
| |
| When the whole scene which greets mine eyes | |
| In some strange mode I recognize | |
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| As one whose every mystic part | |
| I feel prefigured in my heart. | |
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| At sunset, as I calmly stand, | 15 |
| A stranger on an alien strand, | |
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| Familiar as my childhood’s home | |
| Seems the long stretch of wave and foam. | |
| |
| One sails toward me o’er the bay, | |
| And what he comes to do and say | 20 |
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| I can foretell. A prescient lore | |
| Springs from some life outlived of yore. | |
| |
| O swift, instinctive, startling gleams | |
| Of deep soul-knowledge! not as dreams | |
| |
| For aye ye vaguely dawn and die, | 25 |
| But oft with lightning certainty | |
| |
| Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain, | |
| To make old thoughts and memories plain, | |
| |
| Thoughts which perchance must travel back | |
| Across the wild, bewildering track | 30 |
| |
| Of countless æons; memories far, | |
| High-reaching as yon pallid star, | |
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| Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace | |
| Faints on the outmost rings of space! | |
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