Chapter I: HAVE opened the window to warm my hands on the

sill Where the sunlight soaks in the stone: the afternoon Is full of dreams, my love, the boys are all still In a wistful dream of Lorna Doone.

The clink of the shunting engines is sharp and fine, Like savage music striking far off, and there On the great, uplifted blue palace, lights stir and shine Where the glass is domed in the blue, soft air.

There lies the world, my darling, full of wonder and
wistfulness and strange
Recognition and greetings of half-acquaint things, as
I greet the cloud
Of blue palace aloft there, among misty indefinite
dreams that range
At the back of my life's horizon, where the dreamings
of past lives crowd.

Over the nearness of Norwood Hill, through the
mellow veil
Of the afternoon glows to me the old romance of
David and Dora,
With the old, sweet, soothing tears, and laughter
that shakes the sail
Of the ship of the soul over seas where dreamed
dreams lure the unoceaned explorer.

All the bygone, hushèd years Streaming back where the mist distils Into forgetfulness: soft-sailing waters where fears No longer shake, where the silk sail fills With an unfelt breeze that ebbs over the seas, where the storm Of living has passed, on and on Through the coloured iridescence that swims in the warm Wake of the tumult now spent and gone, Drifts my boat, wistfully lapsing after The mists of vanishing tears and the echo of laughter.

DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT

NASCENT

MY world is a painted fresco, where coloured shapes Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes The halls of my life, compelling my soul to conform.

The surface of dreams is broken, The picture of the past is shaken and scattered. Fluent, active figures of men pass along the railway, and I am woken From the dreams that the distance flattered.

Along the railway, active figures of men. They have a secret that stirs in their limbs as they move Out of the distance, nearer, commanding my dreamy world.

Here in the subtle, rounded flesh Beats the active ecstasy. In the sudden lifting my eyes, it is clearer, The fascination of the quick, restless Creator moving through the mesh Of men, vibrating in ecstasy through the rounded flesh.

Oh my boys, bending over your books, In you is trembling and fusing The creation of a new-patterned dream, dream of a generation: And I watch to see the Creator, the power that patterns the dream.

The old dreams are beautiful, beloved, soft-toned, and sure, But the dream-stuff is molten and moving mysteriously, Alluring my eyes; for I, am I not also dream-stuff, Am I not quickening, diffusing myself in the pattern, shaping and shapen?

Here in my class is the answer for the great yearning: Eyes where I can watch the swim of old dreams reflected on the molten metal of dreams, Watch the stir which is rhythmic and moves them all as a heart-beat moves the blood, Here in the swelling flesh the great activity working, Visible there in the change of eyes and the mobile features.

Oh the great mystery and fascination of the unseen Shaper, The power of the melting, fusing Force--heat, light, all in one, Everything great and mysterious in one, swelling and shaping the dream in the flesh, As it swells and shapes a bud into blossom.

Oh the terrible ecstasy of the consciousness that I am life! Oh the miracle of the whole, the widespread, labouring concentration Swelling mankind like one bud to bring forth the fruit of a dream, Oh the terror of lifting the innermost I out of the sweep of the impulse of life, And watching the great Thing labouring through the whole round flesh of the world; And striving to catch a glimpse of the shape of the coming dream, As it quickens within the labouring, white-hot metal, Catch the scent and the colour of the coming dream, Then to fall back exhausted into the unconscious, molten life!

A WINTER'S TALE

YESTERDAY the fields were only grey with scattered snow, And now the longest grass-leaves hardly emerge; Yet her deep footsteps mark the snow, and go On towards the pines at the hills' white verge.

I cannot see her, since the mist's white scarf Obscures the dark wood and the dull orange sky; But she's waiting, I know, impatient and cold, half Sobs struggling into her frosty sigh.

Why does she come so promptly, when she must know That she's only the nearer to the inevitable farewell; The hill is steep, on the snow my steps are slow-- Why does she come, when she knows what I have to tell?