Chapter V

Sure she hath heard my prayer and granted half, As Gods do who at mortal madness laugh. In sleep she comes; she visits me in dreams, And, as her image in a thousand streams, So in my veins, that her obey, she sees, Floating and flaming there, her images Bear to my little world’s remotest zone Glad messages of her, and her alone. With silence-sandalled Sleep she comes to me, (But softer-footed, sweeter-browed, than she,) In motion gracious as a seagull’s wing, And all her bright limbs, moving, seem to sing. If life’s most solid things illusion seem, Why should not substance wear the mask of dream? Let me believe so, then, if so I may With the night’s bounty feed my beggared day. In dreams I see her lay the goddess down With bow and quiver, and her crescent-crown Flicker and fade away to dull eclipse As down to mine she deigns her longed-for lips; And as her neck my happy arms enfold, Flooded and lustred with her loosened gold, She whispers words each sweeter than a kiss: Then, wakened with the shock of sudden bliss, My arms are empty, my awakener fled, And, silent in the silent sky o’erhead, But coldly as on ice-plated snow, she gleams, Herself the mother and the child of dreams.