THE LOOM OF DREAMS
~ Arthur Symons

I broider the world upon a loom,
I broider with dreams my tapestry;
Here in a little lonely room
I am master of earth and sea,
And the planets come to me.

I broider my life into the frame
I broider my love, thread upon thread;
The world goes by with its glory and shame,
Crowns are bartered and blood is shed;
I sit and broider my dreams instead.

And the only world is the world of my dreams,
And my weaving the only happiness;
For what is the world but what it seems?
And who knows but that God, beyond our guess,
Sits weaving worlds out of loneliness?

LOVE IS ENOUGH
~ William Morris

Love is enough: though the world be a-waning,
And the woods have no voice but the voice of complaining,
Though the skies be too dark for dim eyes to discover
The gold-cups and daisies fair blooming thereunder,
Though the hills be held shadows, and the sea a dark wonder,
And this day draw a veil over all deeds passed over,
Yet their hands shall not tremble, their feet shall not falter:
The void shall not weary, the fear shall not alter
These lips and these eyes of the loved and the lover.

LOVE IN EXILE
XXI.
~ Mathilde Blind

I took your face into my dreams,
It floated round me like a light;
Your beauty's consecrating beams
Lay mirrored in my heart all night.
As in a lonely mountain mere,
Unvisited of any streams,
Supremely bright and still and clear,
The solitary moonlight gleams,
Your face was shining in my dreams.

NEVER GIVE ALL THE HEART
~ Wllliam Butler Yeats

Never give all the heart, for love
Will hardly seem worth thinking of
To passionate women if it seem
Certain, and they never dream
That it fades out from kiss to kiss;
For everything that's lovely is
But a brief, dreamy. Kind delight.
O never give the heart outright,
For they, for all smooth lips can say,
Have given their hearts up to the play.
And who could play it well enough
If deaf and dumb and blind with love?
He that made this knows all the cost,
For he gave all his heart and lost.

(Submitted by Masie)

LYRIC
~ John Hewitt

Let but a thrush begin
or colour catch my eye,
maybe a spring-woke whin
under a reeling sky,

and all at once I lose
mortality’s despair,
having so much to choose
out of the teeming air.

MUTABILITY
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly! -- yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost forever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest. -- A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise. -- One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same! -- For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

MY SOUL IS AWAKENED
~ Anne Brontë

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring,
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For, above, and around me, the wild wind is roaring
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray,
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing
And hear the wild roar of their thunder today!

MEETING AT NIGHT
~ Robert Browning

The gray sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i' the slushy sand.

Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!

LOVE SONG
~ Ranier Maria Rilke

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two seperate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

(Translated by Stephen Mitchell)
(Submitted by Anne Alaman)

MOONLIGHT
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As a pale phantom with a lamp
Ascends some ruin's haunted stair,
So glides the moon along the damp
Mysterious chambers of the air.

Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed,
As if this phantom, full of pain,
Were by the crumbling walls concealed,
And at the windows seen again.

Until at last, serene and proud
In all the splendor of her light,
She walks the terraces of cloud,
Supreme as Empress of the Night.

I look, but recognize no more
Objects familiar to my view;
The very pathway to my door
Is an enchanted avenue.

All things are changed. One mass of shade,
The elm-trees drop their curtains down;
By palace, park, and colonnade
I walk as in a foreign town.

The very ground beneath my feet
Is clothed with a diviner air;
While marble paves the silent street
And glimmers in the empty square.

Illusion! Underneath there lies
The common life of every day;
Only the spirit glorifies
With its own tints the sober gray.

In vain we look, in vain uplift
Our eyes to heaven, if we are blind;
We see but what we have the gift
Of seeing; what we bring we find.

LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP
~ Emily Brontë

Love is like the wild rose-briar,
Friendship like the holly-tree -
The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms
But which will bloom most constantly?

The wild rose-briar is sweet in spring,
Its summer blossoms scent the air;
Yet wait till winter comes again,
And who will call the wild-briar fair?

Then, scorn the silly rose-wreath now
And deck thee with the holly's sheen,
That when December blights thy brow
He still may leave thy garland green.

LUNA
~ Gerald Miller

Too soon the sunset comes; too soon
Opens the night its curious eyes,
Greedy to watch the maiden moon
Unloose her silver draperies

And walk upon the star-flowered fields.
Her cloudy garments one by one
To waiting winds she slowly yields,
And now, her last disrobing done,

Flashes lithe limbs across the sky
And flaunts the cold and slender grace
Of unconcerned virginity.
O now before her smiling grace

A thousand rivers, lakes and seas
Hold up their mirrors to her gaze:
A thousand moonlets there she sees
Float on a thousand starry ways.

Beneath her footfall light and free
The peeping star follows shake and fall;
Cold as her watery mirrors, she
Drinks admiration from them all.

In them her nakedness she views,
In love with her own limbs displayed,
And through the wondering night pursues
Her strange unreasonable parade.

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The fountains mingle with the river
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix for ever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by a law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? -

See the mountains kiss high Heaven
And the waves clasp one another;
No sister-flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea:
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?

NOW
~ Robert Browning

Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, - so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, - condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowement,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense -
Merged in a moment which give me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me -
Me -- sure that despite of time future, time past,-
This tick of your life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet -
The moment eternal - just that and no more -
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut and lips meet!

A NOVEMBER NIGHT
~ Sarah Teasdale

There! See the line of lights,
A chain of stars down either side the street --
Why can't you lift the chain and give it to me,
A necklace for my throat? I'd twist it round
And you could play with it. You smile at me
As though I were a little dreamy child
Behind whose eyes the fairies live.... And see,
The people on the street look up at us
All envious. We are a king and queen,
Our royal carriage is a motor bus,
We watch our subjects with a haughty joy. . . .
How still you are! Have you been hard at work
And are you tired to-night? It is so long
Since I have seen you -- four whole days, I think.
My heart is crowded full of foolish thoughts
Like early flowers in an April meadow,
And I must give them to you, all of them,
Before they fade. The people I have met,
The play I saw, the trivial, shifting things
That loom too big or shrink too little, shadows
That hurry, gesturing along a wall,
Haunting or gay -- and yet they all grow real
And take their proper size here in my heart
When you have seen them.... There's the Plaza now,
A lake of light! To-night it almost seems
That all the lights are gathered in your eyes,
Drawn somehow toward you. See the open park
Lying below us with a million lamps
Scattered in wise disorder like the stars.
We look down on them as God must look down
On constellations floating under Him
Tangled in clouds.... Come, then, and let us walk
Since we have reached the park. It is our garden,
All black and blossomless this winter night,
But we bring April with us, you and I;
We set the whole world on the trail of spring.
I think that every path we ever took
Has marked our footprints in mysterious fire,
Delicate gold that only fairies see.
When they wake up at dawn in hollow tree-trunks
And come out on the drowsy park, they look
Along the empty paths and say, "Oh, here
They went, and here, and here, and here! Come, see,
Here is their bench, take hands and let us dance
About it in a windy ring and make
A circle round it only they can cross
When they come back again!"...Look at the lake --
Do you remember how we watched the swans
That night in late October while they slept?
Swans must have stately dreams, I think. But now
The lake bears only thin reflected lights
That shake a little. How I long to take
One from the cold black water -- new-made gold
To give you in your hand! And see, and see,
There is a star, deep in the lake, a star!
Oh, dimmer than a pearl -- if you stoop down
Your hand could almost reach it up to me. . . .

There was a new frail yellow moon to-night --
I wish you could have had it for a cup
With stars like dew to fill it to the brim. . . .

How cold it is! Even the lights are cold;
They have put shawls of fog around them, see!
What if the air should grow so dimly white
That we would lose our way along the paths
Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow.... What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -- but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls
Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.
Walk on a little, let me stand here watching
To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .
I used to wonder how the park would be
If one night we could have it all alone --
No lovers with close arm-encircled waists
To whisper and break in upon our dreams.
And now we have it! Every wish comes true!
We are alone now in a fleecy world;
Even the stars have gone. We two alone!

NIGHT
~ Lucy Maud Montgomery

A pale enchanted moon is sinking low
Behind the dunes that fringe the shadowy lea,
And there is haunted starlight on the flow
Of immemorial sea.

I am alone and need no more pretend
Laughter or smile to hide a hungry heart;
I walk with solitude as with a friend
Enfolded and apart.

We tread an eerie road across the moor
Where shadows weave upon their ghostly looms,
And winds sing an old lyric that might lure
Sad queens from ancient tombs.

I am a sister to the loveliness
Of cool far hill and long-remembered shore,
Finding in it a sweet forgetfulness
Of all that hurt before.

The world of day, its bitterness and cark,
No longer have the power to make me weep;
I welcome this communion of the dark
As toilers welcome sleep.

THE MIST AND ALL
~ Dixie Willson

I like the fall,
The mist and all.
I like the night owl's
Lonely call --
And wailing sound
Of wind around.

I like the gray
November day,
And bare, dead boughs
That coldly sway
Against my pane.
I like the rain.

I like to sit
And laugh at it --
And tend
My cozy fire a bit.
I like the fall --
The mist and all. --

(Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

NATURE THAT FRAMED US OF FOUR ELEMENTS
(From Tamburlaine The Great, Part I)
~ Christopher Marlowe

Nature that framed us of four elements,
Warring within our breasts for regiment,
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds:
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend
The wondrous architecture of the world,
And measure every wandering planet's course,
Still climbing after knowledge infinite,
And always moving as the restless spheres,
Willus to wear ourselves, and never rest,
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all,
That perfect bliss and sole felicity,
That sweet fruition of an earthly crown.

(Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

MUSIC IN THE NIGHT
Harriet Prescott Spofford

When stars pursue their solemn flight,
Oft in the middle of the night,
A strain of music visits me,
Hushed in a moment silverly,--
Such rich and rapturous strains as make
The very soul of silence ache
With longing for the melody;

Or lovers in the distant dusk
Of summer gardens, sweet as musk,
Pouring the blissful burden out,
The breaking joy, the dying doubt;
Or revellers, all flown with wine,
And in a madness half divine,
Beating the broken tune about;

Or else the rude and rolling notes
That leave some strolling sailors' throats,
Hoarse with the salt sprays, it may be,
Of many a mile of rushing sea;
Or some high-minded dreamer strays
Late through the solitary ways,
Nor heeds the listening night, nor me.

Or how or whence those tones be heard,
Hearing, the slumbering soul is stirred,
As when a swiftly passing light
Startles the shadows into flight;
While one remembrance suddenly
Thrills through the melting melody,--
A strain of music in the night.

Out of the darkness burst the song,
Into the darkness moves along:
Only a chord of memory jars,
Only an old wound burns its scars,
As the wild sweetness of the strain
Smites the heart with passionate pain,
And vanishes among the stars.

NIGHT-PIECE
~ Joseph Campbell

Fill me, O stars,
As with an olden tune.
Look thro' your cloudy bars,
O summer moon;
Look thro', and drench in silver light
My soul this night.

O brief, enchanted dream
Of sea and sky,
Of ploughland, meadow, stream,
And twilight loth to die,
Of fire and dew-
My soul is one with you!

NOVEMBER
~ William Cullen Bryant

Yet one smile more, departing, distant sun!
One mellow smile through the soft vapoury air,
Ere, o'er the frozen earth, the loud winds ran,
Or snows are sifted o'er the meadows bare.
One smile on the brown hills and naked trees,
And the dark rocks whose summer wreaths are cast,
And the blue Gentian flower, that, in the breeze,
Nods lonely, of her beauteous race the last.
Yet a few sunny days, in which the bee
Shall murmur by the hedge that skim the way,
The cricket chirp upon the russet lea,
And man delight to linger in thy ray.
Yet one rich smile, and we will try to bear
The piercing winter frost, and winds, and darkened air.

THE NIGHT
~ Emily Brontë

The night is darkening round me,
The wild winds coldly blow;
But a tyrant spell has bound me
And I cannot, cannot go.

The giant trees are bending
Their bare boughs weighed with snow,
And the storm is fast descending
And yet I cannot go.

Clouds beyond clouds above me,
Wastes beyond wastes below;
But nothing drear can move me;
I will not, cannot go.

THE MOON
~ William H. Davies

Thy beauty haunts me heart and soul,
Oh, thou fair Moon, so close and bright;
Thy beauty makes me like the child
That cries aloud to own thy light:
The little child that lifts each arm
To press thee to her bosom warm.

Though there are birds that sing this night
With thy white beams across their throats,
Let my deep silence speak for me
More than for them their sweetest notes:
Who worships thee till music fails,
Is greater than thy nightingales.

THE NEW MOON
~ William Gilmore Simms

"Bend thy bow, Dian! shoot thy silver shaft
Through the dark bosom of yon murky cloud,
That, like a shroud,
Hangs heavy o'er the dwelling of sweet night!"

And the sky laugh'd,
Even as I spake the words; and, in the west,
The columns of her mansion shone out bright!
A glory hung above Eve's visible brow,
The maiden empress!--and she glided forth
In beauty, looking down on the tranced earth,
So fondly, that its rivulets below
Gush'd out to hail her, as if then first blest
With the soft motion of their voiceless birth.
A sudden burst of brightness o'er me broke--
The rugged crags of the dull cloud were cleft
By her sharp arrow, and the edges left,--
How sweetly wounded!--silver'd with the stroke;
Thus making a fit pathway for her march
Through the blue arch!

MUSIC OF SPHERES
~ Jean Follain
(Translated from the French by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass)

 He was walking a frozen road
 in his pocket iron keys were jingling
 and with his pointed shoe absent-mindedly
 he kicked the cylinder
 of an old can
 which for a few seconds rolled its cold emptiness
wobbled for a while and stopped
 under a sky studded with stars.

(Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

LADY ICICLE
~ Emily Pauline Johnson (Tekahionwake)

Little Lady Icicle is dreaming in the north-land
And gleaming in the north-land, her pillow all aglow;
For the frost has come and found her
With an ermine robe around her
Where little Lady Icicle lies dreaming in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is waking in the north-land,
And shaking in the north-land her pillow to and fro;
And the hurricane a-skirling
Sends the feathers all a-whirling
Where little Lady Icicle is waking in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is laughing in the north-land,
And quaffing in the north-land her wines that overflow;
All the lakes and rivers crusting
That her finger-tips are dusting,
Where little Lady Icicle is laughing in the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is singing in the north-land,
And bringing from the north-land a music wild and low;
And the fairies watch and listen
Where her silver slippers glisten,
As little Lady Icicle goes singing through the snow.

Little Lady Icicle is coming from the north-land,
Benumbing all the north-land where'er her feet may go;
With a fringe of frost before her
And a crystal garment o'er her,
Little Lady Icicle is coming with the snow.

LEISURE
~ William Henry Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?-

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

 (Submitted by Katherine Remmel)

THE MOON IS IN THE MARSHES
~ Joseph Campbell

The moon is in the marshes,
The gannets wheel and pass,
Casting wandering shadows
Over the mallow-grass;
Salt airs come lightly blowing
In from the open sea,
And I am dreaming, dreaming
In a silent ecstasy.

A Christ-like quiet gathers
About my weary soul:
The wind wails in the marshes,
The tides tumble and roll;
The red moon sails in beauty
Over the open sea,
And I am dreaming, dreaming
In silent ecstasy.

MY STAR
~ Robert Browning

All that I know
Of a certain star
Is, it can throw
(Like the angled spar)
Now a dart of red,
Now a dart of blue;
Till my friends have said
They would fain see, too,
My star that dartles the red and the blue!
Then it stops like a bird; like a flower hangs furled:
They must solace themselves with the Saturn above it.
What matter to me if their star is a world?
 Mine has opened its soul to me, therefore I love it.

Table of Contents