AVALON
I dreamed I was dreaming one morn as I lay
- In a garden with flowers teeming—
On an island I lay, in a mystical bay,
- In the dream that I dreamed I was dreaming.
The ghost of a scent— had it followed me there
- From the place where I truly was resting?
It filled like an anthem the aisles of the air,
- The presence of roses attesting.
Yet I thought in the dream that I dreamed I dreamed
- That the place was all barren of roses —
That it only seemed; and the place, I deemed.
- Was the Isle of Bedeviled Noses.
Full many a seaman had testified
- How all who sailed near were enchanted,
And landed to search (and in searching died)
- For the roses the Sirens had planted.
For the Sirens were dead, and the billows boomed
- In the stead of their singing forever;
But the roses bloomed on the graves of the doomed,
- Though man had discovered them never.
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