The Vision

Sometimes when I sit musing all alone
The sick diversity of human things,
Into my soul, I know not how, there springs
The vision of a world unlike our own.

O stable Zion, perfect, endless, one,
Why hauntest thou a soul that hath no wings?
I look on thee as men on mirage springs,
Knowing the desert bears but sand and stone.

Yet as a passing mirror in the street
Flashes a glimpse of gardens out of range
Through some poor sick-room open to the heat,
So, in a world of doubt and death and change,
The vision of eternity is sweet,
The vision of eternity is strange.