Dreams

    I.

    An afternoon as ripe with heat
        As might the golden pippin be
    With mellowness if at my feet
        It dropped now from the apple-tree
        My hammock swings in lazily.


    II.

    The boughs about me spread a shade
        That shields me from the sun, but weaves
        With breezy shuttles through the leaves
    Blue rifts of skies, to gleam and fade
        Upon the eyes that only see
        Just of themselves, all drowsily.


    III.

    Above me drifts the fallen skein
        Of some tired spider, looped and blown,
    As fragile as a strand of rain,
        Across the air, and upward thrown
        By breaths of hayfields newly mown -
    So glimmering it is and fine,

On a summer's day as I sat by a stream,
A dainty maid came by,
And she blessed my sight like a rosy dream,
And left me there to sigh, to sigh,
And left me there to sigh, to sigh.

On another day as I sat by the stream,
This maiden paused a while,
Then I made me bold as I told my dream,
She heard it with a smile, a smile,
She heard it with a smile, a smile.

Oh, the months have fled and the autumn's red,
The maid no more goes by:
For my dream came true and the maid I wed,
And now no more I sigh, I sigh,
And now no more I sigh.

Round white clouds roll slowly above the housetops,
Over the clear red roofs they flow and pass.
A flock of pigeons rises with blue wings flashing,
Rises with whistle of wings, hovers an instant,
And settles slowly again on the tarnished grass.

And one old man looks down from a dusty window
And sees the pigeons circling about the fountain
And desires once more to walk among those trees.
Lovers walk in the noontime by that fountain.
Pigeons dip their beaks to drink from the water.
And soon the pond must freeze.

The light wind blows to his ears a sound of laughter,
Young men shuffle their feet, loaf in the sunlight;
A girl’s laugh rings like a silver bell.
But clearer than all these sounds is a sound he hears
More in his secret heart than in his ears,

Last night, I dreamed of Nippon....
    I saw a cloud of white
Drifting before the sunset
    On seas of opal light.

Beyond the wide Pacific
    I saw its mounded snow
Miraculously changing
    In that deep evening glow,

To rosy rifts and hillocks,
    To orchards that I knew,
To snows of peach and cherry,
    And feathers of bamboo.

I saw, on twisted bridges,
    In blue and crimson gleams,
The lanterns of the fishers,
    Along the brook of dreams.

I saw the wreaths of incense
    Like little ghosts arise,
From temples under Fuji,
    From Fuji to the skies.

I saw that fairy mountain....
    I watched it form and fade.
No doubt the gods were singing,
    When Nippon isle was made.

        I.

        Wafted o'er purple seas,
        From gold Hesperides,
        Mixed with the southern breeze,
        Hail to us spirits!
        Dripping with fragrant rains,
        Fire of our ardent veins,
        Life of the barren plains,
Woodlands and germs that the woodland inherits.


        II.

        Wan as the creamy mist,
        Tinged with pale amethyst,
        Warm with the sun that kissed
        Vine-tangled mountains
        Looming o'er tropic lakes,
        Where ev'ry air that shakes
        Tamarisk coverts makes
Music that haunts like the falling of fountains.


        III.

        Swift are our flashing feet,
        Fleet with the winds that meet,
        Winds tha...

When I was but thirteen or so
I went into a golden land,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Took me by the hand.

My father died, my brother too,
They passed like fleeting dreams,
I stood where Popocatapetl
In the sunlight gleams.

I dimly heard the master's voice
And boys far-off at play,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had stolen me away.

I walked in a great golden dream
To and fro from school -
Shining Popocatapetl
The dusty streets did rule.

I walked home with a gold dark boy
And never a word I'd say,
Chimborazo, Cotopaxi
Had taken my speech away:

I gazed entranced upon his face
Fairer than any flower -
O shining Popocatapetl
It was thy magic hour:

The houses, people, traffic seemed
Thin fading dreams b...

TO MY FRIEND, JOHN FOX, JR.


You remember, the deep mist, -
Climbing to the Devil's Den -
Blue beneath us in the glen
And above us amethyst,
Throbbed and circled and away
Thro' the wild-woods opposite,
Torn and shattered, morning-lit,
Scurried up a dewy gray.
Vague as in Romance we saw
From the fog one riven trunk,
Its huge horny talons shrunk,
Thrust a hungry dragon's claw.
And we climbed two hours thro'
The dawn-dripping Jellicoes,
To that wooded rock that shows
Undulating peaks of blue:
The vast Cumberlands that sleep,
Weighed with soaring forests, far
To the concave welkin's bar,
Leagues on leagues of purple sweep.
Range exalted over range
Billowed their enormous spines,
And we heard the priestly pines
Hum...

God made that night of pearl and ivory,
Perfect and holy as a holy thought
Born of perfection, dreams, and ecstasy,
In love and silence wrought.

And she, who lay where, through the casement failing,
The moonlight clasped with arms of vapory gold
Her Danae beauty, seemed to hear a calling
Deep in the garden old.

And then it seemed, through some strange sense, she heard
The roses softly speaking in the night.
Or was it but the nocturne of a bird
Haunting the white moonlight?

It seemed a fragrant whisper vaguely roaming
From rose to rose, a language sweet that blushed,
Saying, "Who comes? Who is this swiftly coming,
With face so dim and hushed?

"And now, and now we hear a wild heart beating
Whose heart is this that beats among our blo...

After C. S. C.

When the hunter-star Orion
    (Or, it may be, Charles his Wain)
Tempts the tiny elves to try on
    All their little tricks again;
When the earth is calmly breathing
    Draughts of slumber undefiled,
And the sire, unused to teething,
    Seeks for errant pins his child;

When the moon is on the ocean,
    And our little sons and heirs
From a natural emotion
    Wish the luminary theirs;
Then a feeling hard to stifle,
    Even harder to define,
Makes me feel I 'd give a trifle
    For the days of Auld Lang Syne.

James--for we have been as brothers
    (Are, to speak correctly, twins),
Went about in one another's
    Clothing, bore each other's sins,
Rose together, ere the pearly
    Tint of morn ha...

I gaze upon my son once more,
With eyes and heart that tire,
As solemnly he stands before
The screen drawn round the fire;
With hands behind clasped hand in hand,
Now loosely and now fast,
Just as his fathers used to stand
For generations past.

A fair and slight and childish form,
And big brown thoughtful eyes,
God help him! for a life of storm
And stress before him lies:
A wanderer and a gipsy wild,
I’ve learnt the world and know,
For I was such another child,
Ah, many years ago!

But in those dreamy eyes of him
There is no hint of doubt,
I wish that you could tell me, Jim,
The things you dream about.
Dream on, my son, that all is true
And things not what they seem,
’Twill be a bitter day for you
When wakened from...

    I.

    Back shining from the pane, the fire
    Seems outside in the snow:
    So love set free from love's desire
    Lights grief of long ago.

    The dark is thinned with snow-sheen fine,
    The earth bedecked with moon;
    Out on the worlds we surely shine
    More radiant than in June!

    In the white garden lies a heap
    As brown as deep-dug mould:
    A hundred partridges that keep
    Each other from the cold.

    My father gives them sheaves of corn,
    For shelter both and food:
    High hope in me was early born,
    My father was so good.


    II.

    The frost weaves ferns and sultry palms
    Across my clouded pane;
    Weaves melodies of ancient psalms
    All through my...

Rest, beauty, stillness: not a waif of a cloud
From gray-blue east sheer to the yellow west -
No film of mist the utmost slopes to shroud.


The earth lies grace, by quiet airs caressed,
And shepherdeth her shadows, but each stream,
Free to the sky, is by that glow possessed,
And traileth with the splendors of a dream
Athwart the dusky land.    Uplift thine eyes!
Unbroken by a vapor or a gleam,


The vast clear reach of mild, wan twilight skies.
But look again, and lo, the evening star!
Against the pale tints black the slim elms rise,


The earth exhales sweet odors nigh and far,
And from the heavens fine influences fall.
Familiar things stand not for what they are:


What they suggest, foreshadow, or recall
The spirit i...

When by the green-wood side, at summer eve,
Poetic visions charm my closing eye;
And fairy-scenes, that Fancy loves to weave,
Shift to wild notes of sweetest Minstrelsy;
'Tis thine to range in busy quest of prey,
Thy feathery antlers quivering with delight,
Brush from my lids the hues of heav'n away,
And all is Solitude, and all is Night!
--Ah now thy barbed shaft, relentless fly,
Unsheaths its terrors in the sultry air!
No guardian sylph, in golden panoply,
Lifts the broad shield, and points the glittering spear.
Now near and nearer rush thy whirring wings,
Thy dragon-scales still wet with human gore.
Hark, thy shrill horn its fearful laram flings!
--I wake in horror, and 'dare sleep no more!'

She is free of the trap and the paddle,
The portage and the trail,
But something behind her savage life
Shines like a fragile veil.

Her dreams are undiscovered,
Shadows trouble her breast,
When the time for resting cometh
Then least is she at rest.

Oft in the morns of winter,
When she visits the rabbit snares,
An appearance floats in the crystal air
Beyond the balsam firs.

Oft in the summer mornings
When she strips the nets of fish,
The smell of the dripping net-twine
Gives to her heart a wish.

But she cannot learn the meaning
Of the shadows in her soul,
The lights that break and gather,
The clouds that part and roll,

The reek of rock-built cities,
Where her fathers dwelt of yore,
The gleam of loch an...

I

Now, in the moonrise, from a wintry sky,
The frost has come to charm with elfin might
This quiet room; to draw with symbols bright
Faces and forms in fairest charactery
Upon the casement; all the thoughts that lie
Deep hidden in my heart's core he would tell,
How the red shoots of fancy strike and swell,
How they are watered, what soil nourished by.

With eerie power he piles his atomies,
Incrusted gems, star-glances overborne
With lids of sleep pulled from the moth's bright eyes,
And forests of frail ferns, blanched and forlorn,
Where Oberon of unimagined size
Might in the silver silence wind his horn.


II

With these alone he draws in magic lines,
Faces that people dreams, and chiefly one
Happy and brilliant as the nort...

One night in my room, still and beamless,
With will and with thought in eclipse,
I rested in sleep that was dreamless;
When softly there fell on my lips

A touch, as of lips that were pressing
Mine own with the message of bliss--
A sudden, soft, fleeting caressing,
A breath like a maiden's first kiss.

I woke-and the scoffer may doubt me--
I peered in surprise through the gloom;
But nothing and none were about me,
And I was alone in my room.

Perhaps 't was the wind that caressed me
And touched me with dew-laden breath;
Or, maybe, close-sweeping, there passed me
The low-winging Angel of Death.

Some sceptic may choose to disdain it,
Or one feign to read it aright;
Or wisdom may seek to explain it--
This mystical kiss in the n...

Who knows the things they dream, alas!
Or feel, who lie beneath the ground?
Perhaps the flowers, the leaves, and grass
That close them round.

In spring the violets may spell
The moods of them we know not of;
Or lilies sweetly syllable
Their thoughts of love.

Haply, in summer, dew and scent
Of all they feel may be a part;
Each red rose be the testament
Of some rich heart.

The winds of fall be utterance,
Perhaps, of saddest things they say;
Wild leaves may word some dead romance
In some dim way.

In winter all their sleep profound
Through frost may speak to grass and stream;
The snow may be the silent sound
Of all they dream.

Yearning upon the faint rose-curves that flit
About her child-sweet mouth and innocent cheek,
And in her eyes watching with eyes all meek
The light and shadow of laughter, I would sit
Mute, knowing our two souls might never knit;
As if a pale proud lily-flower should seek
The love of some red rose, but could not speak
One word of her blithe tongue to tell of it.

For oh, my Love was sunny-lipped and stirred
With all swift light and sound and gloom not long
Retained; I, with dreams weighed, that ever heard
Sad burdens echoing through the loudest throng
She, the wild song of some May-merry bird;
I, but the listening maker of a song.