WHILE sauntering through the crowded street,
Some half-remembered face I meet,
Albeit upon no mortal shore
That face, methinks, hath smiled before.
Lost in a gay and festal throng,
I tremble at some tender song--
Set to all air whose golden bars
I must have heard in other stars.
In sacred aisles I pause to share
The blessings of a priestly prayer--
When the whole scene which greets mine eyes
In some strange mode I recognize
As one whose every mystic part
I feel prefigured in my heart.
At sunset, as I calmly stand,
A stranger on an alien strand--
Familiar as my childhood's home
Seems the long stretch of wave and foam.
One sails toward me o'er the bay,
And what he comes to do and say
I can foretell. A prescient lore
Springs from some life outlived of yore.
O swift, instinctive, startling gleams
Of deep soul-knowledge! not as dreams
For aye ye vaguely dawn and die,
But oft with lightning certainty
Pierce through the dark, oblivious brain,
To make old thoughts and memories plain--
Thoughts which perchance must travel back
Across the wild, bewildering track
Of countless æons; memories far,
High-reaching as yon pallid star,
Unknown, scarce seen, whose flickering grace
Faints on the outmost rings of space!
