In the deserted, moon-blanch'd street, How lonely rings the echo of my feet! Those windows, which I gaze at, frown, Silent and white, unopening down, Repellent as the world;--but see, A break between the housetops shows The moon! and, lost behind her, fading dim Into the dewy dark obscurity Down at the far horizon's rim, Doth a whole tract of heaven disclose! And to my mind the thought Is on a sudden brought Of a past night, and a far different scene. Headlands stood out into the moonlit deep As clearly as at noon; The spring-tide's brimming flow Heaved dazzlingly between; Houses, with long white sweep, Girdled the glistening bay; Behind, through the soft air, The blue haze-cradled mountains spread away, The night was far more fair-- But the same restless pacings to and fro, And the same vainly throbbing heart was there, And the same bright, calm moon. And the calm moonlight seems to say: _Hast thou then still the old unquiet breast,_ _Which neither deadens into rest,_ _Nor ever feels the fiery glow_ _That whirls the spirit from itself away,_ _But fluctuates to and fro,_ _Never by passion quite possess'd_ _And never quite benumb'd by the world's sway?_-- And I, I know not if to pray Still to be what I am, or yield and be Like all the other men I see. For most men in a brazen prison live, Where, in the sun's hot eye, With heads bent o'er their toil, they languidly Their lives to some unmeaning taskwork give, Dreaming of nought beyond their prison-wall. And as, year after year, Fresh products of their barren labour fall From their tired hands, and rest Never yet comes more near, Gloom settles slowly down over their breast; And while they try to stem The waves of mournful thought by which they are prest, Death in their prison reaches them, Unfreed, having seen nothing, still unblest.