As one who to some long locked chamber goes,
And listens there to what the dead have said,
So are there moments when my thoughts are led
To those thick chronicles whose pages close,
Epochs and ages in that same repose
That shall the future as the past o'erspread,
And where but memory may tend the dead
Or prune the ivy where once grew the rose.
And as there to me from their pages streams
The incoherent story of the years,
The aimlessness of all we undertake,
I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who, as we die, do one by one awake.