Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A VISION. " The soul's dark cottage, battered and decayed, Lets in new light through chinks that time has made." The night was wearing to the middle watch, In placid beauty, sea and shore slept soft In moonlight, and the working, weary world Had sunk to rest; along the lonely beach I careless strayed, and sweetly soothed was with The mellowed, mingling murmur of the main ; So sang it on Creation's holy dawn, And thus shall on the Resurrection's morn ; But who that song interpret may? not one Of e'en the wisest of philosophers. The past, the present, time, eternity, Of all it speaks; but most methinks it seems To lift its voice in wailings for the dead. On a rude rock, whose base had long repelled The hostile surge, an ancient ruin stood, Roofless and rent, a minstrel of the storm ; A distant century saw it in its prime— Who built, who dwelt there, history tells us not. They lived—they looked upon the shore and sea, Were hushed to rest with its loud lullaby— And woke to see the new-born beauties of The coming day, they died—we wot no more. To haunt the ruin prone, I entered in, And, as I stood in mood contemplative, Methought within a rifted arch o'erhead, Softened and silvered in the moonlight sheen, A form majestic rose, of stature tall It was beyond the goodliest sons of men ; His face was worn and furrowed, yet withal Still beautiful; yea, of that beauty rare Which years may mar, but not obliterate; His hair flowed o'er his shoulders, and his beard Down to his sapphire girdle, and were both White, and unsullied as the mountain snow. He wore a high tiara, on which blazed In gems the rising and the setting sun ; His robe, which might have been pronounced the Of purity, ...