Classic Poem

THE Vision came upon my sleep
From the phantom-land of dreams;
And, with its prophetic gleams,
Song was sent me, wild and deep,
To tell all I did behold.
The ethereal fire is warm
That stamped upon my mind each form;
But the words which should unfold
Are effaced from memory;
And those shapes fade from my eye,
Faint as records graven on
Fragments of some mouldering stone,
With grey weed and moss o'ergrown,
When the tale they told is gone.
I will painfully essay
To trace them through their decay,
Ere, for aye, they pass away.