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Archibald Lampman - A Vision Of Twilight
Work rating: Low

By a void and soundless river
   On the outer edge of space,
 Where the body comes not ever,
   But the absent dream hath place,
 Stands a city, tall and quiet,
   And its air is sweet and dim;
 Never sound of grief or riot
   Makes it mad, or makes it grim.

 And the tender skies thereover
   Neither sun, nor star, behold--
 Only dusk it hath for cover,--
   But a glamour soft with gold,
 Through a mist of dreamier essence
   Than the dew of twilight, smiles
 On strange shafts and domes and crescents,
   Lifting into eerie piles.

 In its courts and hallowed places
   Dreams of distant worlds arise,
 Shadows of transfigured faces,
   Glimpses of immortal eyes,
 Echoes of serenest pleasure,
   Notes of perfect speech that fall,
 Through an air of endless leisure,
   Marvellously musical.

 And I wander there at even,
   Sometimes when my heart is clear,
 When a wider round of heaven
   And a vaster world are near,
 When from many a shadow steeple
   Sounds of dreamy bells begin,
 And I love the gentle people
   That my spirit finds therein.

 Men of a diviner making
   Than the sons of pride and strife,
 Quick with love and pity, breaking
   From a knowledge old as life;
 Women of a spiritual rareness,
   Whom old passion and old woe
 Moulded to a slenderer fairness
   Than the dearest shapes we know.

 In its domed and towered centre
   Lies a garden wide and fair,
 Open for the soul to enter,
   And the watchful townsmen there
 Greet the stranger gloomed and fretting
   From this world of stormy hands,
 With a look that deals forgetting
   And a touch that understands.

 For they see with power, not borrowed
   From a record taught or told,
 But they loved and laughed and sorrowed
   In a thousand worlds of old;
 Now they rest and dream for ever,
   And with hearts serene and whole
 See the struggle, the old fever,
   Clear as on a painted scroll.

 Wandering by that grey and solemn
   Water, with its ghostly quays--
 Vistas of vast arch and column,
   Shadowed by unearthly trees--
 Biddings of sweet power compel me,
   And I go with bated breath,
 Listening to the tales they tell me,
   Parables of Life and Death.

 In a tongue that once was spoken,
   Ere the world was cooled by Time,
 When the spirit flowed unbroken
   Through the flesh, and the Sublime
 Made the eyes of men far-seeing,
   And their souls as pure as rain,
 They declare the ends of being,
   And the sacred need of pain.

 For they know the sweetest reasons
   For the products most malign--
 They can tell the paths and seasons
   Of the farthest suns that shine.
 How the moth-wing`s iridescence
   By an inward plan was wrought,
 And they read me curious lessons
   In the secret ways of thought.

 When day turns, and over heaven
   To the balmy western verge
 Sail the victor fleets of even,
   And the pilot stars emerge,
 Then my city rounds and rises,
   Like a vapour formed afar,
 And its sudden girth surprises,
   And its shadowy gates unbar.

 Dreamy crowds are moving yonder
   In a faint and phantom blue;
 Through the dusk I lean, and wonder
   If their winsome shapes are true;
 But in veiling indecision
   Come my questions back again--
 Which is real? The fleeting vision?
   Or the fleeting world of men?
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