Over the waste where no hope is seen
    Of open hands:
               Dance in and out
    Small-bosomed girls of the spring of love,
    With a bubble of laughter, and shrilly shout
    Of mirth; then the dripping of tears on your
        glove.

DREAMS OLD AND NASCENT

OLD

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?

EPILOGUE

PATIENCE, little Heart.
One day a heavy, June-hot woman
Will enter and shut the door to stay.

And when your stifling heart would summon
Cool, lonely night, her roused breasts will keep the
     night at bay,
Sitting in your room like two tiger-lilies
Flaming on after sunset,
Destroying the cool, lonely night with the glow of
     their hot twilight;
There in the morning, still, while the fierce strange
     scent comes yet
Stronger, hot and red; till you thirst for the
     daffodillies
With an anguished, husky thirst that you cannot
     assuage,
When the daffodillies are dead, and a woman of the
     dog-days holds you in gage.
Patience, little Heart.

A BABY RUNNING BAREFOOT

WHEN the bare feet of the baby beat across the grass
The little white feet nod like white flowers in the
    wind,
They poise and run like ripples lapping across the
    water;
And the sight of their white play among the grass
Is like a little robin's song, winsome,
Or as two white butterflies settle in the cup of one
    flower
For a moment, then away with a flutter of wings.

I long for the baby to wander hither to me
Like a wind-shadow wandering over the water,
So that she can stand on my knee
With her little bare feet in my hands,
Cool like syringa buds,
Firm and silken like pink young peony flowers.

DISCIPLINE

IT is stormy, and raindrops cling like silver bees to
     the pane,
The thin sycamores in the playground are swinging
     with