Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions,
   Dolorous and dear,
Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters
   Stretching around,
Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape
   Yonder and near,

Blotted to feeble mist.  And the coomb and the upland
   Foliage-crowned,
Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass-flat
   Stroked by the light,
Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial
   Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost
   Under my sight,
Hindering me to discern my paced advancement
   Lengthening to miles;
What were the re-creations killing the daytime
   As by the night?

O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent,
   Some as with smiles,
Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled
   Over the wrecked
Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish,
   Harrowed by wiles.

Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them -
   Halo-bedecked -
And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason,
   Rigid in hate,
Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision,
   Dreaded, suspect.

Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons
   Further in date;
Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion
   Vibrant, beside
Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust
   Now corporate.