“O, I have had a fearful dream,” said he;
  “I will take warning and for mercy trust;
The fiend Remorse shall never dwell with me: 
  I will repair that wrong, I will be just,
I will be kind, I will my ways amend.”
Now the first dream is told unto its end.

Anigh the frozen mere a cottage stood,
  A piercing wind swept round and shook the door,
The shrunken door, and easy way made good,
  And drave long drifts of snow along the floor. 
It sparkled there like diamonds, for the moon
Was shining in, and night was at the noon.

Before her dying embers, bent and pale,
  A woman sat because her bed was cold;
She heard the wind, the driving sleet and hail,
  And she was hunger-bitten, weak and old;
Yet while she cowered, and while the casement shook,
Upon her trembling knees she held a book,—­

A comfortable book for them that mourn,
  And good to raise the courage of the poor;
It lifts the veil and shows, beyond the bourne,
  Their Elder Brother, from His home secure,
That for them desolate He died to win,
Repeating, “Come, ye blessed, enter in.”

What thought she on, this woman? on her days
  Of toil, or on the supperless night forlorn? 
I think not so; the heart but seldom weighs
  With conscious care a burden always borne;
And she was used to these things, had grown old
In fellowship with toil, hunger, and cold.

Then did she think how sad it was to live
  Of all the good this world can yield bereft? 
No, her untutored thoughts she did not give
  To such a theme; but in their warp and weft
She wove a prayer:  then in the midnight deep
Faintly and slow she fell away to sleep.

A strange, a marvellous sleep, which brought a dream. 
  And it was this:  that all at once she heard
The pleasant babbling of a little stream
  That ran beside her door, and then a bird
Broke out in songs.  She looked, and lo! the rime
And snow had melted; it was summer time!

And all the cold was over, and the mere
  Full sweetly swayed the flags and rushes green;
The mellow sunlight poured right warm and clear
  Into her casement, and thereby were seen
Fair honeysuckle flowers, and wandering bees
Were hovering round the blossom-laden trees.

She said, “I will betake me to my door,
  And will look out and see this wondrous sight,
How summer is come back, and frost is o’er,
  And all the air warm waxen in a night.” 
With that she opened, but for fear she cried,
For lo! two Angels,—­one on either side.

And while she looked, with marvelling measureless,
  The Angels stood conversing face to face,
But neither spoke to her.  “The wilderness,”
  One Angel said, “the solitary place,
Shall yet be glad for Him.”  And then full fain
The other Angel answered, “He shall reign.”