1. Mysterious Star

Mysterious star! 

Thou wert my dream 

All a long summer night — 

Be now my theme! 

By this clear stream, 

Of thee will I write;  

Meantime from afar 

Bathe me in light! 

  

Thy world has not the dross of ours, 

Yet all the beauty — all the flowers 

That list our love, or deck our bowers 

In dreamy gardens, where do lie 

Dreamy maidens all the day, 

While the silver winds of Circassy 

On violet couches faint away. 

  

Little — oh! little dwells in thee 

Like unto what on earth we see: 

Beauty’s eye is here the bluest 

In the falsest and untruest — 

On the sweetest air doth float 

The most sad and solemn note — 

If with thee be broken hearts, 

Joy so peacefully departs, 

That its echo still doth dwell, 

Like the murmur in the shell. 

Thou! thy truest type of grief 

Is the gently falling leaf — 

Thou! thy framing is so holy 

Sorrow is not melancholy