In dreams a dark chateau Stands ever open to me, In far ravines dream-waters flow, Descending soundlessly; Above its peaks the eagle floats, Lone in a sunless sky; Mute are the golden woodland throats Of the birds flitting by. No voice is audible. The wind Sleeps in its peace. No flower of the light can find Refuge beneath its trees; Only the darkening ivy climbs Mingled with wilding rose, And cypress, morn and evening, time's Black shadow throws. All vacant, and unknown; Only the dreamer steps From stone to hollow stone, Where the green moss sleeps, Peers at the river in its deeps, The eagle lone in the sky, While the dew of evening drips, Coldly and silently. Would that I could steal in! -- Into each secret room; Would that my sleep-bright eyes could win To the inner gloom; Gaze from its high windows, Far down its mouldering walls, Where amber-clear still Lethe flows, And foaming falls. But ever as I gaze, From slumber soft doth come Some touch my stagnant sense to raise To its old earthly home; Fades then that sky serene; And peak of ageless snow; Fades to a paling dawn-lit green, My dark chateau. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...STABAT MATER DOLOROSA by JACOPONE DA TODI YOUR LAD, AND MY LAD by RANDALL PARRISH UNCLE ANANIAS by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON GLORY OF WOMEN by SIEGFRIED SASSOON TO A THESAURUS by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS ODES: BOOK 1: ODE 18. TO THE HON. FRANCIS EARL OF HUNTINGDON by MARK AKENSIDE THE RIGHT MARY by CLARIBEL WEEKS AVERY EMBLEMS OF LOVE: 27. THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE IN LOVE by PHILIP AYRES |