Pure, calm, diffused, the twilight of the morn
Is in the glen, among the dewy leaves.
Its gentle radiance, more heavenly-born
Than the half-loving sunbeam, never grieves
A nook, unvisited. This Earth receives
The light which makes no shade, as the caress
Of God on his creation, and upheaves
Her soft face, innocent with peace, to bless,
Babe-like, his watchful eye with waking tenderness.
A gate admits us to the Hill we seek;
Through woods a track upon the turf we find;
The trees are dripping dew, their tall stems creak
And rub together when the morning wind
Lightly caresses them. We pause to mind
The note of one awakened bird, whose cry,
Quaint and repeated, is not like its kind.
Our ears are ignorant. Now up the high
And mossy slope we climb, beneath an open sky.
We reach the summit. Earth is in a dream
Of misty seas, and islands strangely born—
The unreal, from reality. The stream
Of wraith-like sights which, ere he can be torn
From peaceful sleep, delights the travel-worn
At slumber’s painted gate, is not more wild
Than the imagining of Earth when Morn
Bids her awaken. So a dreaming child
Looks through white angel wings, and sees all undefiled.
The blessed dream-land fancy of the young,
More truthful than the reasoning of age,
Is like this vision of the morning, sprung
Of earth and air. These lines upon the page
Of Nature have life in them. They assuage
The fevers of the world, they are the dew
Of calm,—and God is calm. How mortals wage
Their wars of weakness Light reveals to view;
Reason fights through the false, but Fancy feels the true.