Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - Moonlight lyrics

As a pale phantom with a lamp   Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, So glides the moon along the damp   Mysterious chambers of the air. Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,   As if this phantom, full of pain, Were by the crumbling walls concealed,   And at the windows seen again. Until at last, serene and proud   In all the splendor of her light, She walks the terraces of cloud,   Supreme as Empress of the Night. I look, but recognize no more   Objects familiar to my view; The very pathway to my door   Is an enchanted avenue. All things are changed. One ma** of shade,   The elm-trees drop their curtains down; By palace, park, and colonnade   I walk as in a foreign town. The very ground beneath my feet   Is clothed with a diviner air; White marble paves the silent street   And glimmers in the empty square. Illusion! Underneath there lies   The common life of every day; Only the spirit glorifies   With its own tints the sober gray. In vain we look, in vain uplift   Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind, We see but what we have the gift   Of seeing; what we bring we find.