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Mild Splendor of the various-vested Night!

Mother of wildly-working visions! hail!

I watch thy gliding, while with watery light

Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil;

And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud

Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;

And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloud

Thy placid lightning o'er th' awakened sky.

Ah, such is Hope! As changeful and as fair!

Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;

Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair:

But soon emerging in her radiant might

She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care

Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.