The Pilgrims of the Rhine

  X.

  APPLICATION OF THE POEM CONTINUED.--THE IDEAL LENDS ITS AID TO THE MOST FAMILIAR AND THE MOST ACTUAL SORROW OF LIFE.--FICTION COMPARED TO SLEEP,--IT STRENGTHENS WHILE IT SOOTHES.

  Trite were the tale I tell of love and doom, (Whose life hath loved not, whose not mourned a tomb?) But fiction draws a poetry from grief, As art its healing from the withered leaf. Play thou, sweet Fancy, round the sombre truth, Crown the sad Genius ere it lower the torch! When death the altar and the victim youth, Flutes fill the air, and garlands deck the porch. As down the river drifts the Pilgrim sail, Clothe the rude hill-tops, lull the Northern gale; With childlike lore the fatal course beguile, And brighten death with Love's untiring smile. Along the banks let fairy forms be seen "By fountain clear, or spangled starlike sheen."* Let sound and shape to which the sense is dull Haunt the soul opening on the Beautiful. And when at length, the symbol voyage done, Surviving Grief shrinks lonely from the sun, By tender types show Grief what memories bloom From lost delight, what fairies guard the tomb. Scorn not the dream, O world-worn; pause a while, New strength shall nerve thee as the dreams beguile, Stung by the rest, less far shall seem the goal! As sleep to life, so fiction to the soul.

  * "Midsummer Night's Dream."