dream

All things uncomely and broken,
All things worn-out and old,
The cry of a child by the roadway,
The creak of a lumbering cart,
The heavy steps of the ploughman,
splashing the wintry mould,
Are wronging your image that blossoms
A rose in the deeps of my heart.
The wrong of unshapely things
Is a wrong too great to be told;
I hunger to build them anew
And sit on a green knoll apart,
With the earth and the sky and the water,
Remade, like a casket of gold
For my dreams of your image that blossoms

1902


When I was a King and a Mason - a Master proven and skilled -
I cleared me ground for a Palace such as a King should build.
I decreed and dug down to my levels. Presently, under the silt,
I came on the wreck of a Palace such as a King had built.

There was no worth in the fashion - there was no wit in the plan -
Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran -
Masonry, brute, mishandled, but carven on every stone:
'After me cometh a Builder. Tell him, I too have known.'

. Sweet Highland Girl, a very shower
Of beauty is thy earthly dower!
Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head:
And these grey rocks; that household lawn;
Those trees, a veil just half withdrawn;
This fall of water that doth make
A murmur near the silent lake;
This little bay; a quiet road
That holds in shelter thy Abode--
In truth together do ye seem
Like something fashioned in a dream;
Such Forms as from their covert peep

493

The World—stands—solemner—to me—
Since I was wed—to Him—
A modesty befits the soul
That bears another's—name—
A doubt—if it be fair—indeed—
To wear that perfect—pearl—
The Man—upon the Woman—binds—
To clasp her soul—for all—
A prayer, that it more angel—prove—
A whiter Gift—within—
To that munificence, that chose—
So unadorned—a Queen—
A Gratitude—that such be true—
It had esteemed the Dream—
Too beautiful—for Shape to prove—
Or posture—to redeem!

493

The World—stands—solemner—to me—
Since I was wed—to Him—
A modesty befits the soul
That bears another's—name—
A doubt—if it be fair—indeed—
To wear that perfect—pearl—
The Man—upon the Woman—binds—
To clasp her soul—for all—
A prayer, that it more angel—prove—
A whiter Gift—within—
To that munificence, that chose—
So unadorned—a Queen—
A Gratitude—that such be true—
It had esteemed the Dream—
Too beautiful—for Shape to prove—
Or posture—to redeem!

Hearken, thou craggy ocean-pyramid,
Give answer by thy voice—the sea-fowls' screams!
When were thy shoulders mantled in huge streams?
When from the sun was thy broad forehead hid?
How long is't since the mighty Power bid
Thee heave to airy sleep from fathom dreams—
Sleep in the lap of thunder or sunbeams—
Or when grey clouds are thy cold coverlid!
Thou answer'st not; for thou art dead asleep.
Thy life is but two dead eternities,
The last in air, the former in the deep!
First with the whales, last with the eagle-skies!

I

Fires in the dark you build; tall quivering flames
In the huge midnight forest of the unknown.
Your soul is full of cities with dead names,
And blind-faced, earth-bound gods of bronze and stone
Whose priests and kings and lust-begotten lords
Watch the procession of their thundering hosts,
Or guard relentless fanes with flickering swords
And wizardry of ghosts.

II

In a strange house I woke; heard overhead
Hastily-thudding feet and a muffled scream...

Friend of my chamber--O thou spiral shell
That murmurest of the ever-murmuring sea!
Repeating with eternal constancy
Whatever memories the wave can tell;
Whatever harmonies may rise and swell,
Whatever sadness in the deep may be--
They are the ocean's, and desired of thee;
Thou treasurest what thou dost love so well.
So all my heart is one voluted fold,
Shielding one face, and evermore it seems
Upon the threshold of the prying day,
Hid in the tangle of reluctant dreams;

Sweet, sweet and the soft listening heaven reels
In one blue ecstasy above thy song
In the red heart of all the opening year,
In the hushed murmur of low dreaming fields
Hung under heaven ’twixt dim blue and blue;
Where the young Summer, purpled and pearled in dew,
Mirrors herself in June, and knows no wrong.

Sweet, sweet, throwing thy lack of fear
Back to the heart of God, till heaven feels
The throbbing of earth’s music through and through.

Dreaming in song,—great pulsing-hearted hills,

THOU singest, thou, me seems,
Coming from high Parnassus; where thy head
Beside the silent streams,
Among fast-fading blooms, hath fashioned
A pillow of pale dreams;
While from thee, sleeping, gods, of heart and soul,
Have taken fullest toll.

Thou knowest at what cost
Thy sleep was taken on those awful hills--
What thou hast gained, and lost;
Thou knowest, too, if what thou art fulfils
The pledge of what thou wast;
And if all compensates the poet's wreath
That wounds the brow beneath.