Classic Poem

Serene dark pool with all your colours dulled,
Your dreamless waves by twilight slumber-lulled:

Your warmth that flamed because the hot sun hushed
Your lip vermillion, that his kisses crushed,

Wan are the tints he left of gold and gem
For dusk's soft, cloudy greys have smothered them.

Where yonder shore's tree-terraced outlines melt,
The shadows circle like a velvet belt.

And down, far down within the sable deep
A white star-soul awakens from its sleep.

O! little lake with nightfall interlink't,
Your darkling shores, your margins indistinct —

More in your depth's uncertainty there lies
Than when you image all the sunset dyes.

Like to the poet's soul, you seem to be
A depth no hand can touch, no eye can see.

And melancholy's dusky clouds drift through
The singer's songs, as twilight drifts o'er you.

O! life that saddens for the colours fled,
Within your depths a diamond 'wakes instead.

Perchance in spheres remote, and fair, and far,
There breathes a twin soul to my soul's white star,

Or have we touched already, and passed by
Unconscious that affinity was nigh?

O! soul, perchance so near me yet unknown,
Some day we'll 'wake within fate's velvet zone.