But, last night, I tried
Some music all my own. I had a dream
That I was wandering in some distant world.
I have often dreamed it Once it was the moon.
I wrote that down in prose. When I am dead,
It may be printed. This was a fairer dream:
For I was walking in a far-off spring
Upon the planet, Venus. Only verse
Could spread true wings for that delicious world;
And so I wrote it--for no eyes but mine,
Or 'twould be seized on, doubtless, as fresh proof
Of poor old Kepler's madness."--
"Let me hear,
Madman to madman; for I, too, write verse."
Then Kepler, in a rhythmic murmur, breathed
His rich enchanted memories of that dream:
"Beauty burned before me
Swinging a lanthorn through that fragrant night.
I followed a distant singing,
And a dreaming light
How she led me, I cannot tell
To that strange world afar,
Nor how I walked, in that wild glen
Upon the sunset star.
Winged creatures floated
Under those rose-red boughs of violet bloom,
With delicate forms unknown on Earth
'Twixt irised plume and plume;
Human-hearted, angel-eyed,
And crowned with unknown flowers;
For nothing in that enchanted world
Followed the way of ours.
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