Mind Flying Afar

What a moment of strange dreaming! Quickly

All my vision girdled earth, and showed me

Temples in far India, tombs in Persia,

Down the Appian Way; and over Florence,

Home of Dante, wandering-place of Browning.

And how strange, how prying was this vision !-

For the coffin of old Landor opened;

Showed me what was left of that imperious

Proud and lonely singer of stern beauty.

There he lay, gone down to bits of nothing-

Just a few stray hairs, a piece of shoulder;

Nothing else of him who wrote these verses:

"Proud word you never spoke, but in some future

Day you shall not keep from speaking these words-

Over my open volume you will linger;

You will say in reading: 'This man loved me.' "

Who was she, and where is gone her beauty?

In what place of cypress or of willows,

In what separation from her poet,

Lies the woman, never speaking proud words?

Only there, over his treasured volume,

"This man loved me," tears upon the pages!