THE DREAMER
I stood in flowers, knee high,
Dreaming of gentleness,
Dreams, in the promise of a shining sky
That I should make a garden from a wilderness;
I would subdue the soil and make it chaste,
Making the desert bear, the useless good,
With my own strength I would redeem the waste,
Would grow the lily where the thistle stood.
The while I dreamed, the flowers were sweet,
Now that the flowers are gone, it seems
They never bloomed except in dreams.
There are no blossoms at my feet,
The bald blue sky is lustreless,
The flowers had never been, except in dreams,
It was a dream . . . this is a wilderness.
My eyes are tired of the skyline,
My feet are tired of the sand,
I am as dried of laughter as the sun-scorched land,
As the staff in my sun-scorched hand.
Had I not dreamed so long,
Not dreamed of so much beauty, or such grace,
Mayhap I could have trod a quieter path,
With other men, in a green, quieter place . . . .
My ears are tired of the silence,
My heart is tired of the toil.
If I sowed any seeds, they have perished,
Nothing is living in the soil.
From the dewless morn I have been here,
Now the day is nearly through;
The tyrant sun sinks down at last,
The colours fade, the sun departs.
Was there a glory--or was that a dream?
I hear, or think I hear, faint music:
Not the song of birds, which are fled from me,
Not the humming of bees, on dream blossom,
Not the voices of happy men . . .
I strain to catch the sound again . . . .
Oh! Let the music swell, slowly,
Mould a stately music, to soothe the pulse of the earth,
Develop the theme.
Do I pray? or hope? or dream?
I do not know if I dreamed I stood in a garden.
(Was it a dream, the flowers' caress?)
Or did I dream of the sun and the sand--
Am I dreaming this wilderness?
Philip Britts, 1936
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