How strange are dreams.    Last night I dreamed about you.
    All that old bitterness of loss and pain,
The desolation of my lot without you,
    The keen regret, all, all came back again.

Again I faced that terrible old sorrow;
    Too numb to weep, too cowardly to pray.
Again the blankness of a dread to-morrow
    Filled me with sickly terror and dismay.

I woke in tears; but lo! a moment after,
    When every vestige of my dream was fled,
I broke the silence of my room with laughter,
    To think sleep had revived a thing so dead.

Thank God, that only in the realms of fancy
    Can that old sorrow wake again to strife.
No fate is strong enough -no necromancy -
    To make it stir one pulse of my calm life.

My heart is light, my lot i...

    As you enter into dream -
    its the unconsciousness
    which stifles,
    the thin embers
    called flame
    that outdistance
    the controlled rubric
    of desire.

Lying listless in the mosses
Underneath a tree that tosses
Flakes of sunshine, and embosses
    Its green shadow with the snow -
Drowsy-eyed, I sink in slumber
Born of fancies without number -
Tangled fancies that encumber
    Me with dreams of long ago.

Ripples of the river singing;
And the water-lilies swinging
Bells of Parian, and ringing
    Peals of perfume faint and fine,
While old forms and fairy faces
Leap from out their hiding-places
In the past, with glad embraces
    Fraught with kisses sweet as wine.

Willows dip their slender fingers
O'er the little fisher's stringers,
While he baits his hook and lingers
    Till the shadows gather dim;
And afar off comes a calling
Like the sounds of water falling,
With the...

"Glenara, Glenara, now read me my dream."
Campbell.

Father, I have dreamed a dream,
    When the rosy morning hour
Poured its light on field and stream,
    Kindling nature with its pow'r; -

O'er the meadow's dewy breast,
    I had chased a butterfly,
Tempted by its gaudy vest,
    Still my vain pursuit to ply, -

Till my limbs were weary grown,
    With the distance I had strayed,
Then to rest I laid me down,
    Where a beech tree cast its shade,

Soon a heaviness came o'er me,
    And a deep sleep sealed my eyes;
And a vision past before me,
    Full of changing phantasies.

First I stood beside a bower,
    Green as summer bow'r could be;
Vine and fruit, and leaf and flower,
    Mixed to weave its canopy....

Long years ago, within a distant clime,
Ere Love had touched me with his wand sublime,
I dreamed of one to make my life's calm May
The panting passion of a summer's day.
And ever since, in almost sad suspense,
I have been waiting with a soul intense
To greet and take unto myself the beams,
Of her, my star, the lady of my dreams.

O Love, still longed and looked for, come to me,
Be thy far home by mountain, vale, or sea.
My yearning heart may never find its rest
Until thou liest rapt upon my breast.
The wind may bring its perfume from the south,
Is it so sweet as breath from my love's mouth?
Oh, naught that surely is, and naught that seems
May turn me from the lady of my dreams.

Chequer'd with woven shadows as I lay
Among the grass, blinking the watery gleam,
I saw an Echo-Spirit in his bay
Most idly floating in the noontide beam.
Slow heaved his filmy skiff, and fell, with sway
Of ocean's giant pulsing, and the Dream,
Buoyed like the young moon on a level stream
Of greenish vapour at decline of day,
Swam airily, watching the distant flocks
Of sea-gulls, whilst a foot in careless sweep
Touched the clear-trembling cool with tiny shocks,
Faint-circling; till at last he dropt asleep,
Lull'd by the hush-song of the glittering deep,
Lap-lapping drowsily the heated rocks.

I dreamed that life and time and space were one,
    And the pure trance of dawn;
    The increase drawn
From all the journeys of the travelling sun,
And the long mysteries of sound and sight,
    The whispering rains,
And far, calm waters set in lonely plains,
    And cry of birds at night.

I dreamed that these and love and death were one,
    And all eternity,
    The life to be
Therewith entwined, throughout the ages spun;
And so with Grief, my playmate; him I knew
    One with the rest, -
One with the mounting day, the east and west -
    Lord, is it true?
Lord, do I dream? Methinks a key unlocks
Some dungeon door, in thrall of blackened towers,
On ecstasies, half hid, like chill white flowers
Blown in the secret places of the rocks.

As Hermes once took to his feathers light
When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon'd and slept,
So on a Delphic reed my idle spright
So play'd, so charm'd, so conquer'd, so bereft
The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes,
And, seeing it asleep, so fled away:
Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,
Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev'd a day;
But to that second circle of sad hell,
Where 'mid the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw
Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell
Their sorrows. Pale were the sweet lips I saw,
Pale were the lips I kiss'd, and fair the form
I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

I have a dream
to fill the golden sheath
of a remembered day....
(Air
heavy and massed and blue
as the vapor of opium...
domes
fired in sulphurous mist...
sea
quiescent as a gray seal...
and the emerging sun
spurting up gold
over Sydney, smoke-pale, rising out of the bay....)
But the day is an up-turned cup
and its sun a junk of red iron
guttering in sluggish-green water -
where shall I pour my dream?

The dreams of my heart and my mind pass,
Nothing stays with me long,
But I have had from a child
The deep solace of song;

If that should ever leave me,
Let me find death and stay
With things whose tunes are played out and forgotten
Like the rain of yesterday.

I dreamed within a dream the sun was gold;
And as I walked beneath this golden sun,
The world was like a mighty play-room old,
Made for our pleasure since it was begun.

But when I waked I found the sun was air,
The world was air, and all things only seemed,
Except the thoughts we grow by; for in prayer
We change to spirits such as God has dreamed.

The moan of a wintry soul
Melted into a summer song,
And the words, like the wavelet's roll,
Moved murmuringly along.

And the song flowed far and away,
Like the voice of a half-sleeping rill --
Each wave of it lit by a ray --
But the sound was so soft and so still,

And the tone was so gentle and low,
None heard the song till it had passed;
Till the echo that followed its flow
Came dreamingly back from the past.

'Twas too late! -- a song never returns
That passes our pathway unheard;
As dust lying dreaming in urns
Is the song lying dead in a word.

For the birds of the skies have a nest,
And the winds have a home where they sleep,
And songs, like our souls, need a rest,
Where they murmur the while we may weep.

  ...

    A voice came to me from the night, and said,
    What profit hast thou in thy dreaming
    Of the years that are set
    And the years yet unrisen?
    Hast thou found them tillable lands?
    Is there fruit that thou canst pluck therein,
    Or any harvest to be mown?
    Shalt thou dig aught of gold from the mines of the past,
    Or trade for merchandise
    In the years where all is rotten?
    Are they a sea that will bring thee to any shore,
    Or a desert that vergeth upon aught but the waste?
    Shalt thou drink from the springs that are emptied,
    Or find sustenance in shadows?
    What value hath the future given thee?
    Is there aught in the days yet dark
    That thou canst hold with thy hands?
    Are they a fortress
    That w...

Now when I sleep the thrush breaks through my dreams
With sharp reminders of the coming day:
After his call, one minute I remain
Unwaked, and on the darkness which is Me
There springs the image of a daffodil,
Growing upon a grassy bank alone,
And seeming with great joy his bell to fill
With drops of golden dew, which on the lawn
He shakes again, where they lie bright and chill.

His head is drooped; the shrouded winds that sing
Bend him which way they will: never on earth
Was there before so beautiful a ghost.
Alas! he had a less than flower-birth,
And like a ghost indeed must shortly glide
From all but the sad cells of memory,
Where he will linger, an imprisoned beam,
Or fallen shadow of the golden world,
Long after this and many another dream.

    I dreamed of a song--I heard it sung;
    In the ear of my soul its strange notes rung.
    What were its words I could not tell,
    Only the voice I heard right well,
    For its tones unearthly my spirit bound
    In a calm delirium of mystic sound--
    Held me floating, alone and high,
    Placeless and silent, drinking my fill
    Of dews that from cloudless skies distil
    On desert places that thirst and sigh.
    'Twas a woman's voice, deep calling to deep,
    Rousing old echoes that all day sleep
    In cavern and solitude, each apart,
    Here and there in the waiting heart;--
    A voice with a wild melodious cry
    Reaching and longing afar and high.
    Sorrowful triumph, and hopeful strife,
    Gainful death, and new-born life,
...

I.

Floating!
Floating--and all the stillness waits
And listens at the ivory gates,
Full of a dim uncertain presage
Of some strange, undelivered message.
There is no sound save from the bush
The alto of the shy wood-thrush,
And ever and anon the dip
Of a lazy oar.

The rhythmic drowsiness keeps time
To hazy subtleties of rhyme
That seem to slip
Through the lulled soul to seek the sleepy shore.
The idle clouds go floating by;
Above us sky, beneath us sky;
The sun shines on us as we lie
Floating.

It is a dream.
It is a dream, my love; see how
The ripples quiver at the prow,
And all the long reflections shake
Unsteadily beneath the lake.
The mists about the uplands show
Dim violet towers that come and go.

'Twas but a dream! and oh! what are they all,
    All the fond visions Hope's bright finger traces,
    All the fond visions Time's dark wing effaces,
But very dreams! but morning buds, that fall
    Withered and blighted, long before the night:
    Strewing the paths they should have made more bright,
With mournful wreaths, whose light hath past away,
    That can return to life and beauty never,
And yet, of whom it was but yesterday,
    We deemed they'd bloom as fresh and fair for ever.
Oh then, when hopes, that to thy heart are dearest,
    Over the future shed their sunniest beam,
When round thy path their bright wings hover nearest,
    Trust not too fondly! - for 'tis but a dream!

Bright be thy dreams--may all thy weeping
Turn into smiles while thou art sleeping.
    May those by death or seas removed,
The friends, who in thy springtime knew thee,
    All thou hast ever prized or loved,
In dreams come smiling to thee!

There may the child, whose love lay deepest,
Dearest of all, come while thou sleepest;
    Still as she was--no charm forgot--
No lustre lost that life had given;
    Or, if changed, but changed to what
Thou'lt find her yet in Heaven!