To E——.

HAD I no memory of thee,
My dreams would be like the weary sea,
Where wave on wave goes journeying by,
With no companion but the sky,
And all is lone and shadowless,
A waste and briny wilderness.
But mid these billows of the mind,
One fairy isle I often find,
Where thou the bright Calypso art,
The queen who rulest o’er my heart,
The fair Titania by whose spells
All flowers around me ring their bells.
O when o’er the wide sea of dreams
I see thy form like sunny beams,
And hear the sweet tones of thy voice,
The crested waves around rejoice,
A morning breaks amid my night,
And thou, the centre of the light,
Guidest me on until I stand,
Still dreaming, on thy spirit-land;
Then seem to wake, and yet half deem
‘Tis but a dream within a dream;
And yet a joy so tangible,
A music yet so audible,
Reality not too refined,
A vision just enough defined,
That I could ever linger there,
And breathe that dream-perfumed air,
And pass my years unshared, unseen,
Save by my fairy-island queen.