The vision of the sunset light
Of ghostly white :
The day is the twilight perfume
Too full to fly away.
O, Japan in milky July,
What an art of dream untold !
You know, over the blue and deep of the seas,
(O the wilderness of the Pacific!)
Like a lantern in love-air, she sways
In pain that is song.
The thought of her presence (a bit of flesh and love)
Makes the dusk of night the dusk of perfume.
Sudden as a kiss her rings glow ;
Over the dusk strings her fingers flow as a wave.
O the breeze of melody of her heart and that of the night,
The ghost musical that dies into the pang of dream !
Bits of straw and clay and woman's hair, —
So shall be builded my house :
Oh to lose the world and gain a song !
Let the clouds flit through the window at the left ;
The dancers shapeless in pain and pride,
From the right dance in as a tide :
A spirit of pagan days, sick in joy,
That rose at the sound of their stamping feet,
I'll sing a song that makes the seas the hills.
(Morality begins, I am afraid, where I stop my song.)
Rags to roll me in, pieces of dream,
So with my heart of nocturnal fear ;
I have choice of the sky red in memory and art.
Let the stars fall in the garden rose :
The leaves and my souls in a thousand guises
Hurry to the ground to build a grave.
With secrets in their eyes the blue-winged Hours
Rustle through the meadow
Dropping shadow.
Yawning among red flowers,
The Moon Child with her golden hoop
And a pink star drifting after,
Leans to me where I droop.
I hear her delicate, soft laughter,
And through my hair her tiny fingers creep. . . .
I shall sleep.
I was asleep, dreaming that I could see
The north hills bowed and burdened with the snow,
And the grey-bearded river old and slow,
And the sick silences on vine and tree —
When in upon my loneliness and me
Light rushed, and sweetness tumbled down as though
Windows had opened for white hands to throw
Roses and roses from a balcony.
Oh Bird, imperious for happiness,
For moments gold as arrows in the air,
I am the only dark in all daybreak!
Let loose your avalanche of loveliness
Over my heart, until I am aware
How long I sleep — and sing me wide awake !
His seat was by a window. So he dreamed.
How could he study while the sunlight gleamed
In small, sweet shapes, like wild things tame enough
To dart to him and touch his hands for love?
While there were profiles carved in every cloud
To mark as grim or ludicrous or proud,
And agile shadowings to writhe and crawl
Like ghostly spiders up and down the wall,
He could not help but turn their way to look.
His eyes, that would not follow down his book
The muddy trudgings of deliberate words,
Reflected blue and silver flights of birds.
You would not think there was so much to trace
Of wonderment on just a window space.
But once, when a frail scrap of paper moon
Enchanted him from ten o'clock, till noon,
You said they were brook trout —
Those fairy blades of sun and moonlight
You so gravely lifted out
One by one from your basket on the grass.
And I held up two handfuls
Of pink and green and white
For everyone to see,
And called the colors by a name,
Wood-anemone.
But of all those little dreams in cups
Left brimming over on the moss,
And of that big, breathless one
We leaned across
The fallen willow to give back again
To deep and shoal —
We never said a word,
I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.
Rachel sings sweet--
Oh yes, at night,
Her pale face bent
In the candle-light,
Her slim hands touch
The answering keys,
And she sings of hope
And of memories:
Sings to the little
Boy that stands
Watching those slim,
Light, heedful hands.
He looks in her face;
Her dark eyes seem
Dark with a beautiful
Distant dream;
Men all, and birds, and creeping beasts,
When the dark of night is deep,
From the moving wonder of their lives
Commit themselves to sleep.
Without a thought, or fear, they shut
The narrow gates of sense;
Heedless and quiet, in slumber turn
Their strength to impotence.
The transient strangeness of the earth
Their spirits no more see:
Within a silent gloom withdrawn,
They slumber in secrecy.
Two worlds they have--a globe forgot
Wheeling from dark to light;
And all the enchanted realm of dream
That burgeons out of night.
Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the briar's boughs,
When March winds wake,
So old with their beauty are--
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.
Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.
Be gentle, O hands of a child;
Be true: like a shadowy sea
In the starry darkness of night
Are your eyes to me.
But words are shallow, and soon
Dreams fade that the heart once knew;
And youth fades out in the mind,
In the dark eyes too.
What can a tired heart say,
Which the wise of the world have made dumb?
Save to the lonely dreams of a child,
'Return again, come!'