So dream the sleepers,

Each man in his place;

The lightning shows the smile
Upon each face:

The ship is driving, driving,

It drives apace:

And sleepers smile, and spirits

Bewail their case.

The lightning glares and reddens

Across the skies;

It seems but sunset

To those sleeping eyes. When did the sun go down On such a wise?

From such a sunset

When shall day arise?

Wake," call the spirits:
But to heedless ears;
They have forgotten sorrows
And hopes and fears;
They have forgotten perils

And smiles and tears;
Their dream has held them long,
Long years and years.

"Wake," call the spirits again :

But it would take

A louder summons

To bid them awake.

Some dream of pleasure
For another's sake;
Some dream, forgetful
Of a lifelong ache.

One by one slowly,

Ah, how sad and slow!

Wailing and praying

The spirits rise and go : Clear stainless spirits,

White, as white as snow:

Pale spirits, wailing

For an overthrow.

One by one flitting,

Like a mournful bird
Whose song is tired at last
For no mate heard.
The loving voice is silent,

The useless word;

One by one flitting,

Sick with hope deferred.

Driving and driving,

The ship drives amain:

While swift from mast to mast

Shapes flit again,

Flit silent as the silence

Where men lie slain;

Their shadow cast upon the sails

Is like a stain.

No voice to call the sleepers,

No hand to raise :

They sleep to death in dreaming
Of length of days.
Vanity of vanities,
The Preacher says:

Vanity is the end

Of all their ways.

FROM HOUSE TO HOME.

HE first was like a dream through summer heat,

TH

The second like a tedious numbing swoon,

While the half-frozen pulses lagged to beat

Beneath a winter moon.

But," says my friend, "what was this thing and

where?"

It was a pleasure-place within my soul;

An earthly paradise supremely fair

That lured me from the goal.

The first part was a tissue of hugged lies;
The second was its ruin fraught with pain:
Why raise the fair delusion to the skies
But to be dashed again?

My castle stood of white transparent glass
Glittering and frail with many a fretted spire,
But when the summer sunset came to pass
It kindled into fire.

My pleasaunce was an undulating green,

Stately with trees whose shadows slept below, With glimpses of smooth garden-beds between, Like flame or sky or snow.

Swift squirrels on the pastures took their ease,
With leaping lambs safe from the unfeared knife;
All singing-birds rejoicing in those trees

Fulfilled their careless life.

Wood-pigeons cooed there, stock-doves nestled there; My trees were full of songs and flowers and fruit, Their branches spread a city to the air,

And mice lodged in their root.

My heath lay farther off, where lizards lived
In strange metallic mail, just spied and gone;
Like darted lightnings here and there perceived
But nowhere dwelt upon.

Frogs and fat toads were there to hop or plod
And propagate in peace, an uncouth crew,
Where velvet-headed rushes rustling nod
And spill the morning dew.

All caterpillars throve beneath my rule,
With snails and slugs in corners out of sight;

I never marred the curious sudden stool

That perfects in a night.

Safe in his excavated gallery

The burrowing mole groped on from year to year; No harmless hedgehog curled because of me His prickly back for fear.

Ofttimes one like an angel walked with me,
With spirit-discerning eyes like flames of fire,
But deep as the unfathomed endless sea
Fulfilling my desire :

And sometimes like a snowdrift he was fair,
And sometimes like a sunset glorious red,
And sometimes he had wings to scale the air
With aureole round his head.

We sang our songs together by the way,
Calls and recalls and echoes of delight;
So communed we together all the day,
And so in dreams by night.

I have no words to tell what way we walked,
What unforgotten path now closed and sealed;
I have no words to tell all things we talked,
All things that he revealed:

This only can I tell that hour by hour

I waxed more feastful, lifted up and glad;
I felt no thorn-prick when I plucked a flower,
Felt not my friend was sad.