Four Poems , opus 15

         I have been here before,
              But when or how I cannot tell:
          I know the grass beyond the door,
              The sweet keen smell,
    The sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

          You have been mine before, --
              How long ago I may not know:
          But just when at that swallow's soar
              Your neck turned so,
    Some veil did fall, -- I knew it all of yore.

          Has this been thus before?
              And shall not thus time's eddying flight
          Still with our lives our love restore
              In death's despite,
    And day and night yield one delight once more? 

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow -
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicéan barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! In yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy-Land!

Tell me again , and then lift up to me
     Those frail white arms of thine , and touch my face ,
     And wrap me wholly in thine eyes ' embrace ,
Till God's sure hand run fire round thee and me .
Tell me again , and let thy speaking be
     A faint phrased echo , delicate as lace ,
     Of seas sonorous through the void of space ,
The low , lost rhythm of immensity .

Tell me again , and where thy breasts divide
     Pillow my weariness , -- the breath of Fall
          Shall blow crisp crimson leaves upon thy hair ;
Thy presence is as where a song has died ,
     And left its memory grieving over all
          This vital solitude of autumn air .