THE WANDERER: 5. IN HOLLAND: A DREAM by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON

I HAD a quiet dream last night:
For I dreamed that I was dead;
Wrapped around in my grave-clothes white,
With my gravestone at my head.

I lay in a land I have not seen,
In a place I do not know,
And the grass was deathly, deathly green
Which over my grave did grow.

The place was as still as still could be,
With a few stars in the sky,
And an ocean whose waves I could not see,
Though I heard them moan hard by.

There was a bird in a branch of yew,
Building a little nest.
The stars looked far and very few,
And I lay all at rest.

There came a footstep through the grass,
And a feeling through the mould:
And a woman pale did over me pass,
With hair like snakes of gold.

She read my name upon my grave:
She read my name with a smile.
A wild moan came from a wandering wave,
But the stars smiled all the while.

The stars smiled soft. That woman pale
Over my grave did move,
Singing all to herself a tale
Of one that died for love.

There came a sparrow-hawk to the tree,
The little bird to slay:
There came a ship from over the sea,
To take that woman away.

The little bird I wished to save,
To finish his nest so sweet:
But so deep I lay within my grave
That I could not move my feet.

That woman pale I wished to keep
To finish the tale I heard:
But within my grave I lay so deep
That I could not speak a word.

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