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| AS a pale phantom with a lamp | |
| Ascends some ruin’s haunted stair, | |
| So glides the moon along the damp | |
| Mysterious chambers of the air. | |
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| Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, | 5 |
| As if this phantom, full of pain, | |
| Were by the crumbling walls concealed, | |
| And at the windows seen again. | |
| |
| Until at last, serene and proud | |
| In all the splendor of her light, | 10 |
| She walks the terraces of cloud, | |
| Supreme as Empress of the Night. | |
| |
| I look, but recognize no more | |
| Objects familiar to my view; | |
| The very pathway to my door | 15 |
| Is an enchanted avenue. | |
| |
| All things are changed. One mass of shade, | |
| The elm-trees drop their curtains down; | |
| By palace, park, and colonnade | |
| I walk as in a foreign town. | 20 |
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| The very ground beneath my feet | |
| Is clothed with a diviner air; | |
| While marble paves the silent street | |
| And glimmers in the empty square. | |
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| Illusion! Underneath there lies | 25 |
| The common life of every day; | |
| Only the spirit glorifies | |
| With its own tints the sober gray. | |
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| In vain we look, in vain uplift | |
| Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind; | 30 |
| We see but what we have the gift | |
| Of seeing; what we bring we find. | |
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