Lines. "In visions countless as the golden motes"

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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 is—it be.
  Then with an accent by despair made wild,
  I call aloud upon thy name, my child,
  And I behold thine eyes—and suddenly
  I'm in the dark of utter misery.

© Frances Anne Kemble