In visions countless as the golden motes
   That dance upon the sun's earth-kissing beams,
   A phantom haunts my life, an image floats
   Through my day-thoughts, and through my midnight dreams,
   Clothed in a thousand forms which fancy traces
   With quick creation, and as soon effaces.
   Sometimes, it slowly sweeps in silence by,
   Beneath some long Ionian colonnade,
   Through whose far vista I behold it fade,
  Girlish in form, in bearing sad and high.
  Sometimes, in some removèd chamber lone,
  Where the sun's mellow radiance is thrown
  Around it, in a thousand varying hues,
  That melt and glow, it seems to sit and muse.
  Sometimes, upon a gray and stony shore,
  The lonely figure strays distractedly,
  Or stands, and gazes the wide water o'er,
  Stretching its arms above the cruel sea.
  And all this while, I never see the face
  Of this close haunting shape, that follows me;
  And vainly do I strive, and pray for grace,
  To know if what I think it isit be.
  Then with an accent by despair made wild,
  I call aloud upon thy name, my child,
  And I behold thine eyesand suddenly
  I'm in the dark of utter misery.
Lines. "In visions countless as the golden motes"
written byFrances Anne Kemble
© Frances Anne Kemble


 



