All silent the deep heaven without a cloud,
  Burning like molten gold.  A red canoe
  Crosses with fan-like paddles and the sound
  Of feminine song, freighted with great-eyed maids
  Whose unzoned bosoms swell on the rich air;
  A lamp is in each hand; some mystic rite
  Go they to try.  Such rites the birds may see,
  Ibis or emu, from their cocoa nooks,—­
  What time the granite sentinels that watch
  The mouths of cavern-temples hail the first
  Faint star, and feel the gradual darkness blend
  Their august lineaments;—­what time Haroun
  Perambulated Bagdat, and none knew
  He was the Caliph who knocked soberly
  By Giafar’s hand at their gates shut betimes;—­
  What time prince Assad sat on the high hill
  ’Neath the pomegranate-tree, long wearying
  For his lost brother’s step;—­what time, as now,
  Along our English sky, flame-furrows cleave
  And break the quiet of the cold blue clouds,
  And the first rays look in upon our roofs.

  Let the day come or go; there is no let
  Or hindrance to the indolent wilfulness
  Of fantasy and dream-land.  Place and time
  And bodily weight are for the wakeful only. 
  Now they exist not:  life is like that cloud,
  Floating, poised happily in mid-air, bathed
  In a sustaining halo, soft yet clear,
  Voyaging on, though to no bourne; all heaven
  Its own wide home alike, earth far below
  Fading still further, further.  Yet we see,
  In fancy, its green fields, its towers, and towns
  Smoking with life, its roads with traffic thronged
  And tedious travellers within iron cars,
  Its rivers with their ships, and laborers,
  To whose raised eye, as, stretched upon the sward,
  They may enjoy some interval of rest,
  That little cloud appears no living thing,
  Although it moves, and changes as it moves. 
  There is an old and memorable tale
  Of some sound sleeper being borne away
  By banded fairies in the mottled hour
  Before the cockcrow, through unknown weird woods
  And mighty forests, where the boughs and roots
  Opened before him, closed behind;—­thenceforth
  A wise man lived he, all unchanged by years. 
  Perchance again these fairies may return,
  And evermore shall I remain as now,
  A dreamer half awake, a wandering cloud!

        The spell
  Of Merlin old that ministered to fate,
  The tales of visiting ghosts, or fairy elves,
  Or witchcraft, are no fables.  But his task
  Is ended with the night;—­the thin white moon
  Evades the eye, the sun breaks through the trees,
  And the charmed wizard comes forth a mere man
  From out his circle.  Thus it is, whate’er
  We know and understand hath lost the power
  Over us;—­we are then the master.  Still
  All Fancy’s world is real; no diverse mark
  Is on the stores of memory, whether gleaned