Constancy to an Ideal Object

Since all that beat about in Nature's range, / Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain / The only constant in a world of change, / O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain? / Call to the Hours, that in the distance play, / The faery people of the future day -- / Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm / Will breathe on _thee_ with life-enkindling breath, / Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm, / Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death! / Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see, / She is not thou, and only thou art she, / Still, still as though some dear _embodied_ Good, / Some _living_ Love before my eyes there stood / With answering look a ready ear to lend, / I mourn to thee and say -- "Ah! loveliest friend! / That this the meed of all my toils might be, / To have a home, an English home, and thee! " / Vain repetition! Home and Thou are one. / The peacefull'st cot, the moon shall shine upon, / Lulled by the thrush and wakened by the lark, / Without thee were but a becalmed bark, / Whose helmsman on an ocean waste and wide / Sits mute and pale his mouldering helm beside.

And art thou nothing? Such thou art, as when / The woodman winding westward up the glen / At wintry dawn, where o'er the sheep-track's maze / The viewless snow-mist weaves a glist'ning haze, / Sees full before him, gliding without tread, / An image with a glory round its head; / The enamoured rustic worships its fair hues, / Nor knows he _makes_ the shadow, he pursues!