Outside fall the snowflakes lightly Through the night, loud raves the storm In my room the fire glows brightly, And ’tis cosy, silent, warm.
Musing sit I on the settle By the firelight’s cheerful blaze, Listening to the busy kettle Humming long-forgotten lays.
And beside me sits a kitten, Warming at the blaze her feet; Strangely are my senses smitten As the flickering flames they meet.
Many a dim long-buried story O’er me soon begins to rise, But with dead and faded glory, And in strange and mask’d disguise.
Lovely women with shrewd faces Greet me with a secret smile, Then the harlequins run races, Laughing merrily the while.
Distant marble-gods nod kindly, Dreamily beside them grow Fable-flow’rs, whose leaves wave blindly In the moonlight to and fro.
Magic castles, once resplendent, Ruin’d now, in sight appear; Knights in armour, squires attendant Quickly follow in their rear.
All these visions I discover As with shadowy haste they pass,-- Ah, the kettle’s boiling over, And the kitten’s burnt, alas!
Thou beholdest in thy vision Fable’s silent flow’rs before thee, And a yearning wild steals o’er thee At their fragrant scent elysian.
But thou from those flow’rs art parted By a gulf both deep and fearful; Thou becomest sad and tearful, And at last art broken-hearted.
How they glitter! how they lure me! Could I but the gulf pass over! How the secret to discover, And a bridge across procure me?
Thou hast call’d me forth from out of the grave By means of thy magic will now, And fill’d me full of love’s fierce glow-- This glow thou never canst still now.
O press thy mouth against my mouth, Man’s breath with heaven is scented; Thy very soul I’ll drain to the dregs, The dead are never contented.
The flowerets sweet are crush’d by the feet Full soon, and perish despairing; One passes by, and they must die, The modest as well as the daring.
The pearls all sleep in the caves of the deep, Where one finds them, despite wind and weather A hole is soon bored and they’re strung on a cord, And there fast yoked together.
The stars are more wise, and keep in the skies, And hold the earth at a distance; They shed their light in the heavens so bright, In safe and endless existence.
Faithless as Saint Thomas, never Could I in the heaven believe Which both Jew and Priest endeavour To compel men to receive.