dream

C.K. loquitur.

I dreamed I was in fair Niphon.
Amid tea-fields I journeyed on,
Reclined in my jinrikishaw;
Across the rolling plains I saw
The lordly Fusi-yama rise,
His blue cone lost in bluer skies.

At last I bade my bearers stop
Before what seemed a china-shop.
I roused myself and entered in.
A fearful joy, like some sweet sin,
Pierced through my bosom as I gazed,
Entranced, transported, and amazed.
For all the house was but one room,
And in its clear and grateful gloom,

A dream lies dead here. May you softly go
Before this place, and turn away your eyes,
Nor seek to know the look of that which dies
Importuning Life for life. Walk not in woe,
But, for a little, let your step be slow.
And, of your mercy, be not sweetly wise
With words of hope and Spring and tenderer skies.
A dream lies dead; and this all mourners know:

Whenever one drifted petal leaves the tree-
Though white of bloom as it had been before
And proudly waitful of fecundity-

Only a dream, a beautiful baseless dream;
Only a bright
Flash from your eyes, a brief electrical gleam,
Charged with delight.

Only a waking, alone, in the moon's last gleam
Fading from sight;
Only a flooding of tears that shudder and stream
Fast through the night.

I dreamed that I ws dead and crossed the heavens,--
Heavens after heavens with burning feet and swift,--
And cried: "O God, where art Thou?" I left one
On earth, whose burden I would pray Thee lift."

I was so dead I wondered at no thing,--
Not even that the angels slowly turned
Their faces, speechless, as I hurried by
(Beneath my feet the golden pavements burned);

Nor, at the first, that I could not find God,
Because the heavens stretched endlessly like space.
At last a terror siezed my very soul;

The king's beard on which sauces and ovations
fell until it became heavy as an axe
appears suddenly in a dream to a man condemned to die
and on a candlestick of flesh shines alone in the dark.

One hand for tearing meat is huge as a whole province
through which a ploughman inches forward a corvette lingers
The hand wielding the sceptre has withered from distinction
has grown grey from old age like an ancient coin

In the hour-glass of the heart sand trickles lazily
Feet taken off with boots stand in a corner

Fair Saxon, in my lover's creed,
My love were smaller than your meed,
And you might justly deem it slight,
As wanting truth as well as sight,
If, in that image which is shrined
Where thoughts are sacred, you could find
A single charm, or more or less,
Than you to all kind eyes possess.
To me, even in the happiest dreams,
Where, flushed with love's just dawning gleams,
My hopes their radiant wings unfurl,
You're but a simple English girl,
No fairer, grace for grace arrayed,
Than many a simple Southern maid;

PLAY me a march, low-ton’d and slow—a march for a silent tread,
Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the silent dead,
Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that are overhead.

Here for a while they smil’d and sang, alive in the interspace,
Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars above the face,
Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither has flown their grace?

Who shall assure us whence they come, or tell us the way they go?

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,

Let us put awhile away
All the cares of work-a-day,
For a golden time forget,
Task and worry, toil and fret,
Let us take a day to dream
In the meadow by the stream.

We may lie in grasses cool
Fringing a pellucid pool,
We may learn the gay brook-runes
Sung on amber afternoons,
And the keen wind-rhyme that fills
Mossy hollows of the hills.

Where the wild-wood whisper stirs
We may talk with lisping firs,
We may gather honeyed blooms
In the dappled forest glooms,

Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away,
With a fetterless wind that is out on the downs,
And there piping a call to the fallow and shore,
Where the sea evermore
Surgeth over the gray reef, and drowns
The fierce rocks with white foam;
It is ours with untired feet to roam
Where the pines in green gloom of wide vales make their murmuring home,
Or the pools that the sunlight hath kissed
Mirror back a blue sky that is winnowed of cloud and of mist!

Ho, a day
Whereon we may up and away