"A Dream" by Edgar Allan Poe

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The picture used is a photo taken by EPA employee (and thus is public domain) Charles O'Rear in 1941, of sunrays through storm clouds over Grafton, in the farmlands west of Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sorry about the noise of the page turn after the first stanza, I tried recording it a number of times but couldn't not pick it up. The hazards of reading from a physical paper and ink book ;-)

In visions of the dark night
I have dreamed of joy departed—
But a waking dream of life and light
Hath left me broken-hearted.

Ah! what is not a dream by day
To him whose eyes are cast
On things around him with a ray
Turned back upon the past?

That holy dream—that holy dream,
While all the world were chiding,
Hath cheered me as a lovely beam
A lonely spirit guiding.

What though that light, thro' storm and night,
So trembled from afar—
What could there be more purely bright
In Truth's day-star?