PALE thoughts, like drops of trembling dew, By sunset of my hopes shot through; Faint longings, colourless at noon, But turned to beryls in the moon; Ecstatic dreams; obscure desires, Lit up by misty opal-fires; Intensest visions, caught between The flight of phantoms scarcely seen; Within this featureless array Of year by year and day by day, I fix them, flashing, ere they pass, And turn them into gems -- or glass! I string them, be they stone or paste, I string them ere they fall to waste, And in my fond delusion fling The circlet o'er Time's hurrying wing. Ah! they may hang a moment there, Caught by a feather, high in air, -- Or they may flit to earth amain Dissolved in tears of silver rain. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON THE WAY (PHILADELPHIA, 1794) by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON SONNET; OXFORD, 1916 by GEORGE SANTAYANA THISTLE by WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS DULCE ET DECORUM EST by WILFRED OWEN SONG OF THE ANGELS AT THE NATIVITY by NAHUM TATE TO HIS MISTRESS; AN ODE by ANACREON |