‘Life’s sweetest dreams
Are foam on streams.’
An ancient dream has wandered
Through earth since the earliest time,
And he o’er whom it sweepeth
Grows stern — or it may be weepeth,
Like one who suffers with longing
For a sweet yet terrible crime.
It hath but a single picture;
A fountain which leaps and foams,
And by it a woman sits yearning,
Starting ‘mid reveries — burning
For a love which never comes.
The fountain leaps up in passion,
Darts out in a gleaming pain;
And the longing of him who dreameth,
And the passion of her who seemeth,
Fall back into foam again.
From: Leland, Charles Godfrey, The Music-Lesson of Confucius, and Other Poems, 1872, Trübner & Co: London, p. 88.
(https://archive.org/details/musiclessonconf01conggoog)
Date: 1872
By: Charles Godfrey Leland (1824-1903)
From Troubles of The World 