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THE PHANTOM LAND. PART I. 

 BY KENBICK VAN WINKLE. 



I DREAMED that on some solitary shore 



Thoughtful I stood what shore I cannot say 



A sea rolled full in view with sullen roar 



What sea I cannot tell a waste it lay, 



A gloomy waste up-heaving evermore 



A waste that I aspired to explore, 



And bring back tidings to the realms of day. 



" Eternity ! Eternity !" I cried 



" Eternity ! whose nature I partake, 



Since mortal and immortal are allied 



In man's unsearchably mysterious make 



Eternity ! my soul, unsatisfied, 



Pants to know more of thee, and of thy wide 



Dominion, so it be her thirst to slake. 



" But who can hope, as on the solid ground, 

 To tread thy airy realms ? or who aright 

 Can bend his way to thy remotest bound, 

 Hid as it is in everlasting night; 

 Or with a line and plummet who can sound 

 Thy dark unknown, untractable, profound ? 

 Or who can soar to thy sublimest height ! 



" Thou hast a million lamps of purest light 



Hanging from thy ethereal dome but all 



Are scarce sufficient to reveal to sight 



A hand-breadth of thy realm ! Their flashes fall 



Blunted and quenched by circumambient night. 



In vain they urge the long unequal fight, 



No ray of their's has ever reach' d thy wall ! 



" Hail ! habitation of creation's Lord ! 



Pavilion of the Deity ! whose power, 



And will, and wisdom do to thee accord 



Thy grand existence ! O, that I could tower 



To thy vast cupola on pinions broad, 



Or swim unharmed athwart the gulf abhorred, 



Though I brought back no amaranthine flower ! 



" But chiefly what betides th' undying mind 

 Affects me. The departed! where are they ? 

 How, with no star to lead me, shall I find 

 Heaven's happy precincts ? or search out my way 

 To that dim region where the sun ne'er shined ? 

 The shore to which the wicked are consigned 

 The shore where melancholy phantoms stray?" 



