The Long Dream

THE summer will come with a fresh perfume
Where all the brown leaves are lying,
And the windy air with a blush and bloom,
Like a shuttle blown through a silken loom,
In the delicate foliage plying.
The morning will gather its colors anew,
As sweet as a girlish promise,
Of green and golden and rose and blue,
To weave fresh violets out of the dew
As bright as the ones stolen from us.
As I lie at ease in my last repose,
All the beauty about me woven,
Like the cunning of sense that inward flows,
I shall feel in the blush that dyes the rose
And the germ when its husk is cloven.
And the rootlets find their way under-ground
Through the toils of the season’s malice,
Till I know how the coil of sense is wound
To the far-off stars in the depths profound,
Where Earth seems a golden palace.
But you will not know of the watch I keep
Where the flow of the senses all pass,
Like a dreamer, who hears the stir and creep
Of the wind, while gently I lie asleep
Under the broad-leafed catalpas.
Will Wallace Harney.