dark

Too far away, oh love, I know,
To save me from this haunted road,
Whose lofty roses break and blow
On a night-sky bent with a load

Of lights: each solitary rose,
Each arc-lamp golden does expose
Ghost beyond ghost of a blossom, shows
Night blenched with a thousand snows.

Of hawthorn and of lilac trees,
White lilac; shows discoloured night
Dripping with all the golden lees
Laburnum gives back to light.

And shows the red of hawthorn set

There is naught in the pathless reach
Of the pale, blue sky above,
There is naught that the stars tell, each to each,
As over the heavens they rove;
That I have not felt, or have not seen
Clad in dull earth or fancy's sheen.

There is naught, in the still, mauve twilight
When the dreams come flitting by,
From lands afar of eternal night,
Or lands of the sunswept sky,
For countless spirits within me dwell
With heaven's efflugence or dark hell.

Who first said "false as dreams?" Not one who saw
Into the wild and wondrous world they sway;
No thinker who hath read their mystic law;
No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.

Else had he known that through the human breast
Cross and recross a thousand fleeting gleams,
That, passed unnoticed in the day's unrest,
Come out at night, like stars, in shining dreams;

That minds too busy or to dull to mark
The dim suggestions of the noisier hours,
By dreams in the deep silence of the dark,

There is a breath at midnight that comes in
Sad as a sigh, for then the day is dead
And the young morrow doth his course begin,
Sowing new dreams in many a dreamer's head.
And there are two have waked in one dark bed
Just as the last stroke fades in lonely air,
And having whispered, half-awake, have sped
With silent feet into sleep's poppied lair.
She with the morning wakes, but he is gone;
Her tears and kisses are of no avail--
Perchance it was his good-bye murmured on

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
Dark like me-
That is my dream!

To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening...
A tall, slim tree...
Night coming tenderly
Black like me.

Author Note: In Finland there is a Castle which is called the New Rock, moated about with a river of unfounded depth, the water black and the fish therein
very distateful to the palate. In this are spectres often seen, which
foreshew either the death of the Governor, or some prime officer
belonging to the place; and most commonly it appeareth in the shape of
an harper, sweetly singing and dallying and playing under the water.

It is reported of one Donica, that after she was dead, the Devil walked

Don't cheer, damn you! Don't cheer!
Silence! Your bitterest tear
Is fulsomely sweet to-day. . . .
Down on your knees and pray.
II
See, they sing as they go,
Marching row upon row.
Who will be spared to return,
Sombre and starkly stern?
Chaps whom we knew - s0 strange,
Distant and dark with change;
Silent as those they slew,
Something in them dead too.
Who will return this way,
To sing as they sing to-day.
III
Send to the glut of the guns
Bravest and best of you sons.

She said: "I am too old to play
With dolls," and put them all away,
Into a box, one rainy day.
II
I think she must have felt some pain,
She looked so long into the rain,
Then sighed: "I'll bring you out again;
III
"For I'll have little children too,
With sunny hair and eyes of blue
And they will play and play with you.
IV
"And now good-bye, my pretty dears;
There in the dark for years and years,
Dream of your little mother's tears."
V
Eglantine, Pierrot and Marie Claire,

Down home to-night the moonshine falls
Across a hill with daisies pied,
The pear tree by the garden gate
Beckons with white arms like a bride.

A savor as of trampled fern
Along the whispering meadow stirs,
And, beacon of immortal love,
A light is shining through the firs.

To my old gable window creeps
The night wind with a sigh and song,
And, weaving ancient sorceries,
Thereto the gleeful moonbeams throng

Beside the open kitchen door
My mother stands all lovingly,

Doubt no more that Oberon—
Never doubt that Pan
Lived, and played a reed, and ran
After nymphs in a dark forest,
In the merry, credulous days,—
Lived, and led a fairy band
Over the indulgent land!
Ah, for in this dourest, sorest
Age man's eye has looked upon,
Death to fauns and death to fays,
Still the dog-wood dares to raise—
Healthy tree, with trunk and root—
Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,
And the starlings and the jays—
Birds that cannot even sing—
Dare to come again in spring!