Agnes Mary Frances Duclaux (Robinson-Darmesteter) (1857–1944)

NEAR where yonder evening star

Makes a glory in the air,

Lies a land dream-found and far

Where it is light alway.

There those lovely ghosts repair

Who in Sleep’s enchantment are,

In Cockayne dwell all things fair—

(But it is far away.)

Through the gates—a goodly sight—

Troops of men and maidens come,

There shut out from Heaven at night

Belated angels stray;

Down those wide-arch’d groves they roam

Through a land of great delight,

Dreaming they are safe at home—

(But it is far away.)

There the leaves of all the trees

Written are with a running rhyme,

There all poets live at peace,

And lovers are true, they say.

Earth in that unwinter’d clime

Like a star incarnate sees

The glory of her future time.—

(But it is far away.)

Hard to find as it is far!

Dark nights shroud its brilliance rare,

Crouching round the cloudy bar

Under the wings of day.

But if thither ye will fare,

Love and Death the pilots are,—

Might either one convey me there!

(But it is far away.)