ountains in the brain,
Still pouring thro', floods with redundant light
Her narrow portals.

Trust me, long ago
I should have died, if it were possible
To die in gazing on that perfectness
Which I do bear within me; I had died
But from my farthest lapse, my latest ebb,
Thine image, like a charm of light and strength
Upon the waters, pushed me back again
On these deserted sands of barren life.
Tho' from the deep vault, where the heart of hope
Fell into dust, and crumbled in the dark--
Forgetting who to render beautiful
Her countenance with quick and healthful blood--
Thou didst not sway me upward, could I perish
With such a costly casket in the grasp
Of memory? He, that saith it, hath o'erstepp'd
The slippery footing of his narrow wit,
And fall'n away from judgment. Thou art light,
To which my spirit leaneth all her flowers,
And length of days, and immortality
Of thought, and freshness ever self-renew'd.
For Time and Grief abode too long with Life,
And like all other friends i' the world, at last
They grew aweary of her fellowship:
So Time and Grief did beckon unto Death,
And Death drew nigh and beat the doors of Life;
But thou didst sit alone in the inner house,
A wakeful port'ress and didst parle with Death,
'This is a charmed dwelling which I hold';
So Death gave back, and would no further come.
Yet is my life nor in the present time,
Nor in the present place. To me alone,
Pushed from his chair of regal heritage,
The Present is the vassal of the Past:
So that, in that I _have_ lived, do I live,
And cannot die, and am, in having been,
A portion of the pleasant yesterday,
Thrust forward on to-day and out of place;
A body journeying onward, sick with toil,
The lithe limbs bow'd as with a heavy weight
And all the senses weaken'd in all save that
Which, long ago, they had glean'd and garner'd up
Into the granaries of memory--
The clear brow, bulwark of the precious brain,
Now seam'd and chink'd with years--and all the while
The light soul twines and mingles with the growths
Of vigorous early days, attracted, won,
Married, made one with, molten into all
The beautiful in Past of act or place.
Even as the all-enduring camel, driven
Far from the diamond fountain by the palms,
Toils onward thro' the middle moonlight nights,
Shadow'd and crimson'd with the drifting dust,
Or when the