I dreamed I did but dream my love was dead,
And all for nought had been my long complaint;
He had come back and stood beside my bed,
Grown tall and straight and fair as Andrea’s saint.
He has come back! Again the tidings rang;
Again my pulses leaped with wild delight;
Again the choric stars together sang,
And joyous pæans sounded through the night.
But with the calm of heaven on me he smiled,
There where in feverish ecstasy I lay,
As on a mother her home-coming child,
When childish things have long been put away.
“’Tis thou art now my care,” looks such an one,
“And I thy stay, thy comforter, thy son.”
[Illustration: “Or heaven reflected in the serious face.”]