Imagination

Rich raptures, you say, our dreams assume,
Slaking the heart’s immortal thirst?
Only the old we reillume;
But think—to have dreamed the flowers first!

Think,—to have dreamed the first blue sea;
Imaged every illustrious hue
Of the earliest sunset’s tapestry;
And the snow,—and the birds, when their songs were new!

Think,—from the blue of highest heaven
To have sown all the stars, to have whispered “Light!”—
Hung a moon in a prismy even,
Spun a world on its splendid flight!

To have first conceived of boundless Space;
To have thought so small as to garb the trees;
All planet years in your mind’s embrace,—
And the midge’s life, for all of these!

And Man still boasts of his brain’s weak best
In dream or invention; from first to last
Blunders ’mid wonders barely guessed.
And fondly believes that his thoughts are “vast”!