They seem the enfolding mountains of some fairer land
That lies beyond the world,
With vales of purpling rose in hills eburnean furled
And halcyonian flowers unplucked of any hand

I deem their creamy crags look distantly on meres
Where misty torrents fall
Sleepily through the silver dimness covering all,
Vague as the magic air of half-remembered years.

Below their sun-bright passes, leading palely down
To meadows never seen,
Are fruits that star with shadowy gold the strange demesne,
The purple realms of peace that bear no tower nor town.

And though they change and pass, with toppling peaks unstable,
To leave the lands we know,
This fantasy is mine from long and long ago,
A dream unproven still, and still inviolable.