Palingenesis

I lay upon the headland-height, and listened     To the incessant sobbing of the sea         In caverns under me,     And watched the waves, that tossed and fled and glistened,     Until the rolling meadows of amethyst         Melted away in mist.     Then suddenly, as one from sleep, I started;     For round about me all the sunny capes         Seemed peopled with the shapes     Of those whom I had known in days departed,     Apparelled in the loveliness which gleams         On faces seen in dreams.     A moment only, and the light and glory     Faded away, and the disconsolate shore         Stood lonely as before;     And the wild-roses of the promontory     Around me shuddered in the wind, and shed         Their petals of pale red.     There was an old belief that in the embers     Of all things their primordial form exists,         And cunning alchemists     Could re-create the rose with all its members     From its own ashes, but without the bloom,         Without the lost perfume.     Ah me! what wonder-working, occult science     Can from the ashes in our hearts once more         The rose of youth restore?     What craft of alchemy can bid defiance     To time and change, and for a single hour         Renew this phantom-flower?     "O, give me back," I cried, "the vanished splendors,     The breath of morn, and the exultant strife,         When the swift stream of life     Bounds o'er its rocky channel, and surrenders     The pond, with all its lilies, for the leap         Into the unknown deep!"     And the sea answered, with a lamentation,     Like some old prophet wailing, and it said,         "Alas! thy youth is dead!     It breathes no more, its heart has no pulsation;     In the dark places with the dead of old         It lies forever cold!"     Then said I, "From its consecrated cerements     I will not drag this sacred dust again,         Only to give me pain;     But, still remembering all the lost endearments,     Go on my way, like one who looks before,         And turns to weep no more."     Into what land of harvests, what plantations     Bright with autumnal foliage and the glow         Of sunsets burning low;     Beneath what midnight skies, whose constellations     Light up the spacious avenues between         This world and the unseen!     Amid what friendly greetings and caresses,     What households, though not alien, yet not mine,         What bowers of rest divine;     To what temptations in lone wildernesses,     What famine of the heart, what pain and loss,         The bearing of what cross!     I do not know; nor will I vainly question     Those pages of the mystic book which hold         The story still untold,     But without rash conjecture or suggestion     Turn its last leaves in reverence and good heed,         Until "The End" I read.