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<h1 id="id00623" style="margin-top: 5em">TO MY DREAM-LOVE.</h1>
<p id="id00624" style="margin-top: 2em">Where art thou, oh! my Beautiful? Afar<br/>
I seek thee sadly, till the day is done,<br/>
And o'er the splendour of the setting sun,<br/>
Cold, calm, and silvery, floats the evening star;<br/>
Where art thou? Ah! where art thou, hid in light<br/>
That haunts me, yet still wraps thee from my sight?<br/></p>
<p id="id00625">Not wholly—ah! not wholly—still Love's eyes<br/>
Trace thy dim beauty through the mystic veil,<br/>
Like the young moon that glimmers faint and pale,<br/>
At noontide through the sun-web of the skies;<br/>
But ah! I ope mine arms, and thou art gone,<br/>
And only Memory knows where thou hast shone.<br/></p>
<p id="id00626">Night—Night the tender, the compassionate,<br/>
Binds thee, gem-like, amid her raven hair;<br/>
I dream—I see—I feel that thou art there—<br/>
And stand all weeping at Sleep's golden gate,<br/>
Till the leaves open, and the glory streams<br/>
Down through my trancèd soul in radiant dreams.<br/></p>
<p id="id00627">Too short—too short—soon comes the chilly morn,<br/>
To shake from love's boughs all their sleep-born bloom,<br/>
And wake my heart back to its bitter doom,<br/>
Sending me through the land down-cast, forlorn,<br/>
Whilst thou, my Beautiful, art far away,<br/>
Bearing the brightness from my joyless day.<br/></p>
<p id="id00628">I stand and gaze across Earth's fairest sea,<br/>
And still the plashing of the restless main,<br/>
Sounds like the clashing of a prisoner's chain,<br/>
That binds me, oh! my Beautiful, from thee.<br/>
Oh! sea-bird, flashing past on snow-white wing,<br/>
Bear my soul to her in thy wandering.<br/></p>
<p id="id00629">My heart is weary gazing o'er the sea;<br/>
O'er the long dreary lines that close the sky;<br/>
Through solemn sun-sets ever mournfully,<br/>
Gazing in vain, my Beautiful, for thee;<br/>
Hearing the sullen waves for evermore<br/>
Dashing around me on the lonely shore.<br/></p>
<p id="id00630">But tides creep lazily about the sands,<br/>
Washing frail landmarks, Lethe-like, away,<br/>
And though their records perish day by day,<br/>
Still stand I ever, with close claspèd hands,<br/>
Gazing far westward o'er the heaving sea,<br/>
Gazing in vain, my Beautiful, for thee.<br/></p>
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