I

Once, only once, I saw it clear,-- That Eden every human heart has dreamed A hundred times, but always far away! Ah, well do I remember how it seemed, Through the still atmosphere Of that enchanted day, To lie wide open to my weary feet: A little land of love and joy and rest, With meadows of soft green, Rosy with cyclamen, and sweet With delicate breath of violets unseen,-- And, tranquil 'mid the bloom As if it waited for a coming guest, A little house of peace and joy and love Was nested like a snow-white dove

From the rough mountain where I stood, Homesick for happiness, Only a narrow valley and a darkling wood To cross, and then the long distress Of solitude would be forever past,-- I should be home at last. But not too soon! oh, let me linger here And feed my eyes, hungry with sorrow, On all this loveliness, so near, And mine to-morrow!

Then, from the wood, across the silvery blue, A dark bird flew, Silent, with sable wings. Close in his wake another came,-- Fragments of midnight floating through The sunset flame,-- Another and another, weaving rings Of blackness on the primrose sky,-- Another, and another, look, a score, A hundred, yes, a thousand rising heavily From that accursed, dumb, and ancient wood,-- They boiled into the lucid air Like smoke from some deep caldron of despair! And more, and more, and ever more, The numberless, ill-omened brood, Flapping their ragged plumes, Possessed the landscape and the evening light With menaces and glooms. Oh, dark, dark, dark they hovered o'er the place Where once I saw the little house so white Amid the flowers, covering every trace Of beauty from my troubled sight,-- And suddenly it was night!