As one who to some long-locked chamber goe,
And listens there to what the dead have said,
So there are moments when my thoughts are led
To those dull chronicles whose pages close
Epochs and ages in the same repose
That shall the future as the past o'erspread,
And where but Memory may tend the dead,
Or prune the ivy where once grew the rose.
And as there to me from their pages streams
The incoherent story of the years,
The aimlessness of all we undertake,
I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who, as we die, do one by one awake.