POETRY.
THE DREAMER.
An ! let me leave the dust and glare Of urban streets for hidden rills; Let me catch summer's robe, and share The lonely comfort of the hills.
Or in some dim and distant vale Where late spring flowers linger yet, And some impassioned nightingale Sings above banks of violet, At the rapt hour when evening loves To kiss the forehead of the world, When hushed are all the drowsy doves, And every roving wing is furled, Grant me to lie and muse away The memory of our modern life; Let me forget the age of clay In all its weariness and strife.
Or on the bank where sighing reeds Are sung to slumber by the stream. Leave me, remote from jostling creeds, Conflicting cultures, in a dream Of bright Arcadia yet unbarred, And that dead epoch of old Greece When mighty heroes Argo manned, All amorous of the Golden Fleece.
So shall I climb the stair of Jove And drink of the Olympian wine, Or hear Demeter sigh for love Of her enravished Proserpine. Within the stmburut walls of Troy The maids are fair, the men are strong; I see the glittering troops deploy,— The bands of mighty warriors throng Towards the city gate ; I see The lovely, languid Spartan Queen, And, near her, pale Andromache, One white hand lifted up to screen Her anxious eyes from noon-tide glare, Searching for Hector's haughty crest, And Cressid, with her rippling hair, Of all frail things the loveliest.
The Gates of Hell unclose to me, And Cerberus hangs his triple head, Before me pass in panoply The splendid legions of the dead.
I am the Lord of all the past, The tyrant of the land of dreams ; Yea—in this world the least and last— I am the God of that which seems.
So let me flee this noisy age ; Blot out my name from memory's scroll; Leave me my dreamer's heritage, The secret kingdom of the soul.
ST. Jon LtiCA3,
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