Fata Morgana Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

So I at last attain
All I have longed to gain;
The fairy fleeting shade,
The bliss so long delayed, -
Now stress and strife are past,
I seize at last.

Yet is it well at all?
I trod her echoing hall,
I clasped her robe, and caught:
Lo, is it this I sought,
This hollow sprite I see
That gibes at me?

I took her magic cup,
I drank the charmed wine up.
Where was the sweetness then, -
The fabled prize of men?
Lo, bitterness was there
And dark despair.

O for the road again,
The unrewarded pain,
The hard, rough, wayside bed,
The stars above my head,
Hope like a springing fire,
Doubts, dreams, desire.