Fairyland

  Dim vales--and shadowy floods--
  And cloudy-looking woods,
  Whose forms we can't discover
  For the tears that drip all over
  Huge moons there wax and wane--
  Again--again--again--
  Every moment of the night--
  Forever changing places--
  And they put out the star-light
  With the breath from their pale faces.
  About twelve by the moon-dial
  One more filmy than the rest
  (A kind which, upon trial,
  They have found to be the best)
  Comes down--still down--and down
  With its centre on the crown
  Of a mountain's eminence,
  While its wide circumference
  In easy drapery falls
  Over hamlets, over halls,
  Wherever they may be--
  O'er the strange woods--o'er the sea--
  Over spirits on the wing--
  Over every drowsy thing--
  And buries them up quite
  In a labyrinth of light--
  And then, how deep!--O, deep!
  Is the passion of their sleep.
  In the morning they arise,
  And their moony covering
  Is soaring in the skies,
  With the tempests as they toss,
  Like--almost any thing--
  Or a yellow Albatross.
  They use that moon no more
  For the same end as before--
  Videlicet a tent--
  Which I think extravagant:
  Its atomies, however,
  Into a shower dissever,
  Of which those butterflies,
  Of Earth, who seek the skies,
  And so come down again
  (Never-contented thing!)
  Have brought a specimen
  Upon their quivering wings.

1831