"Sometimes-could it be fancy?-I have felt

The presence of a spirit who might speak;

As down in lowly reverence I knelt,

Its very breath hath kissed my burning cheek;

But I in vain have hushed my own to hear A wing or whisper stir the silent air!"

1 The most elaborate performance in the edition of 1860, indeed the longest poem Timrod ever wrote, is called "A Vision of Poesy." Its purpose is to show, in the subtle development of a highly gifted imaginative nature, the true laws which underlie and determine the noblest uses of the poetical faculty. (P. H. Hayne's Introduction to the edition of 1873.)

XXXIII

Is not the breeze articulate? Hark! Oh, hark!

A distant murmur, like a voice of floods; And onward sweeping slowly through the dark,

Bursts like a call the night-wind from the woods!

10

Low bow the flowers, the trees fling loose their dreams,

And through the waving roof a fresher moonlight streams.

XXXIV

"Mortal!"-the word crept slowly round the place

As if that wind had breathed it! From no star

Streams that soft lustre on the dreamer's face.

Again a hushing calm! while faint and far

The breeze goes calling onward through the night.

Dear God! what vision chains that widestrained sight?

XXXV

Over the grass and flowers, and up the slope

Glides a white cloud of mist, self-moved and slow,

20

That, pausing at the hillock's moonlit cope, Swayed like a flame of silver; from below

The breathless youth with beating heart beholds

A mystic motion in its argent folds.