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To Imagination.

TO IMAGINATION.

WHEN weary with the long day's care,
  And earthly change from pain to pain,
And lost and ready to despair,
  Thy kind voice calls me back again:
Oh, my true friend ! I am not lone,
While thou canst speak with such a tone !

So hopeless is the world without;
  The world within I doubly prize;
Thy world, where guile, and hate, and doubt,
  And cold suspicion never rise;
Where thou, and I, and Liberty,
Have undisputed sovereignty.

What matters it, that, all around,
  Danger, and guilt, and darkness lie,
If but within our bosom's bound
  We hold a bright, untroubled sky,
Warm with ten thousand mingled rays
Of suns that know no winter days ?

Reason, indeed, may oft complain
  For Nature's sad reality,
And tell the suffering heart, how vain
  Its cherished dreams must always be;
And Truth may rudely trample down
The flowers of Fancy, newly-blown:

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But, thou art ever there, to bring
  The hovering vision back, and breathe
New glories o'er the blighted spring,
  And call a lovelier Life from Death,
And whisper, with a voice divine,
Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
  Yet, still, in evening's quiet hour,
With never-failing thankfulness,
  I welcome thee, Benignant Power;
Sure solacer of human cares,
And sweeter hope, when hope despairs !

ELLIS. Emily Jane Brontë (1818-1848)