I saw a spirit standing, Man,
Where thou dost stand an hour ago,
And round his feet three rivers ran
Of equal depth and equal flow

A Golden Stream, and one like blood
And one like sapphire, seemed to be
But where they joined their triple flood
It tumbled in a blackened sea

The spirit bent his dazzling gaze
Down on that ocean's gloomy night,
Then kindling all with sudden blaze,
The glad deep sparkled wide and bright

White as the sun, and far more fair
That their divided sources were!

And for that spirit Seer,
I've watched and sought my lifetime long
Sought him in Heaven, Hell, Earth and Air
An endless search and always wrong!

Had I but seen his glorious eye
Once light the cloud surrounding me,
I ne'er had raised this coward cry
To cease to think and cease to me.