THEY have taken the gable from the roof of clayOn the long swede pile. They have let in the sunTo the white and gold and purple of curled frondsUnsunned. It is a sight more tender-gorgeousAt the wood-corner where Winter moans and dripsThan when, in the Valley of the Tombs of Kings,A boy crawls down into a Pharaoh's tombAnd, first of Christian men, beholds the mummy,God and monkey, chariot and throne and vase,Blue pottery, alabaster, and gold.But dreamless long-dead Amen-hotep lies.This is a dream of Winter, sweet as Spring.
Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn :It listens, listens. Taller trees beyondListen. The moon at the unruffled pondStares. And you sing, you sing.That star-enchanted song falls through the airFrom lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground ;While all the night you sing.My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee,As all night long I listen, and my brainReceives your song, then loses it againIn moonlight on the lawn.Now is your voice a marble high and white,Then like a mist on fields of paradise ;Now is a raging fire, then is like ice,Then breaks, and it is dawn.
I shall return again; I shall returnTo laugh and love and watch with wonder-eyesAt golden noon the forest fires burn,Wafting their blue-black smoke to sapphire skies.I shall return to loiter by the streamsThat bathe the brown blades of the bending grasses,And realize once more my thousand dreamsOf waters rushing down the mountain passes.I shall return to hear the fiddle and fifeOf village dances, dear delicious tunesThat stir the hidden depths of native life,Stray melodies of dim remembered runes.I shall return, I shall return again,To ease my mind of long, long years of pain.