INTO the silver night <br />She brought with her pale hand <br />The topaz lanthorn-light, <br />And darted splendour o'er the land; <br />Around her in a band, <br />Ringstraked and pied, the great soft moths came flying, <br />And flapping with their mad wings, fann'd <br />The flickering flame, ascending, falling, dying. <br />Behind the thorny pink <br />Close wall of blossom'd may, <br />I gazed thro' one green chink <br />And saw no more than thousands may,— <br />Saw sweetness, tender and gay,— <br />Saw full rose lips as rounded as the cherry, <br />Saw braided locks more dark than bay, <br />And flashing eyes decorous, pure, and merry. <br /> <br />With food for furry friends <br />She pass'd, her lamp and she, <br />Till eaves and gable-ends <br />Hid all that saffron sheen from me: <br />Around my rosy tree <br />Once more the silver-starry night was shining, <br />With depths of heaven, dewy and free, <br />And crystals of a carven moon declining. <br /> <br />Alas! for him who dwells <br />In frigid air of thought, <br />When warmer light dispels <br />The frozen calm his spirit sought; <br />By life too lately taught <br />He sees the ecstatic Human from him stealing; <br />Reels from the joy experience brought, <br />And dares not clutch what Love was half revealing.<br /><br />Edmund William Gosse<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/revelation-61/
