A wilder’d being from my birth
My spirit spurn’d control,
But now, abroad on the wide earth,
Where wand’rest thou my soul?
In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed—
But a waking dreams of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.
Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?
That holy dream—that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.
What though that light, thro’ storm and night,
So trembled from afar—
What could there be more purely bright
In Truths day-star?