Epimetheus Or The Poet's Afterthought

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

    Have I dreamed? or was it real,
        What I saw as in a vision,
    When to marches hymeneal
    In the land of the Ideal
        Moved my thought o'er Fields Elysian?

    What! are these the guests whose glances
        Seemed like sunshine gleaming round me?
    These the wild, bewildering fancies,
    That with dithyrambic dances
        As with magic circles bound me?

    Ah! how cold are their caresses!
        Pallid cheeks, and haggard bosoms!
    Spectral gleam their snow-white dresses,
    And from loose dishevelled tresses
        Fall the hyacinthine blossoms!

    O my songs! whose winsome measures
        Filled my heart with secret rapture!
    Children of my golden leisures!
    Must even your delights and pleasures
        Fade and perish with the capture?

    Fair they seemed, those songs sonorous,
        When they came to me unbidden;
    Voices single, and in chorus,
    Like the wild birds singing o'er us
        In the dark of branches hidden.

    Disenchantment!    Disillusion!
        Must each noble aspiration
    Come at last to this conclusion,
    Jarring discord, wild confusion,
        Lassitude, renunciation?

    Not with steeper fall nor faster,
        From the sun's serene dominions,
    Not through brighter realms nor vaster,
    In swift ruin and disaster,
        Icarus fell with shattered pinions!

    Sweet Pandora! dear Pandora!
        Why did mighty Jove create thee
    Coy as Thetis, fair as Flora,
    Beautiful as young Aurora,
        If to win thee is to hate thee?

    No, not hate thee! for this feeling
        Of unrest and long resistance
    Is but passionate appealing,
    A prophetic whisper stealing
        O'er the chords of our existence.

    Him whom thou dost once enamour,
        Thou, beloved, never leavest;
    In life's discord, strife, and clamor,
    Still he feels thy spell of glamour;
        Him of Hope thou ne'er bereavest.

    Weary hearts by thee are lifted,
        Struggling souls by thee are strengthened,
    Clouds of fear asunder rifted,
    Truth from falsehood cleansed and sifted,
        Lives, like days in summer, lengthened!

    Therefore art thou ever clearer,
        O my Sibyl, my deceiver!
    For thou makest each mystery clearer,
    And the unattained seems nearer,
        When thou fillest my heart with fever!

    Muse of all the Gifts and Graces!
        Though the fields around us wither,
    There are ampler realms and spaces,
    Where no foot has left its traces:
        Let us turn and wander thither!