University of Virginia Library

Last Night I dreamed my happy way to Heaven.
How many books had told of gate and guard,
Of Spirits crowding near their battlements
To watch a giant sun's cohering gold
Alarm the distant comet! Not a gate
Of jasper glistened; not an angel scanned
The road of sky between his world and ours;
No seraph, travelling Godward to report
His news of far dominions quick with life,
Magnificently drove along the air
A splendour such as fasting Vision saw
And named for ever in the Testament
Of Israel. In front of me there stretched,
With flanking woods and shrubberies, a space
Of lawnland green as January moss
And level as a sea when unprovoked
To wrath by heady challenges of storm.
Though plainly far from home, I did not guess
(Because the trees and shrubs and blossoming
Were like familiars greatly loved on Earth)
That then, in truth, I walked the very Land
Renowned in books of angel-hearted song
By those on whom descended spiritual fire;
Yet Apprehension, fretting mind and soul,
By nothing louder than her voicelessness
Proclaimed the instant death of what was old,
Announced the cry and stir of what was new.

No power forbidding, I began to move
Toward the far-off point where wooded edge
And wooded edge, as friends allowed to meet,
By curving, neared at last a green embrace;
And did not pause, till underneath a foot
I heard the voice of brittleness, and found
A leaf, and then beheld a sister leaf
As brown as withered finery strewn above
The hopeful bracken working underground
To be a bridesmaid on the wedding-day
When Earth and Autumn marry. Then I thought,
As one by many a prophet told that Death
Can never blight a lily-bud in Heaven,
“This leaf, being dead, reveals that I as yet
Have failed to reach the Tomb of Sinfulness,
Where God alone is central and supreme;
For seasons are but foam upon the tides
Of birth and perishing; and here those tides
Advance, recede, since what was green is brown.”

While standing thus to think about the leaf
I heard a footstep very close behind,
And, turning, saw a girl about to pass.
Her eyes, so confident, so purely beamed,
Sent holiness to mine. As cool as leaves,
As grave as hills, without allure, she passed
And showed her tallness, and (for thus I thought)
A motion that proceeded less from her
Than from a shadowed fount of beauty known
To none but Music. Often had I seen,
Walking as though in harmony with that
On which they trod, the feet of earth-born maids
Convey the sense of song; but none had moved
As moved the girl in front of me. Our world
And she were not companions; yet I felt
How very far she was from being a proof
That I explored a lonely part of Heaven,
And deemed her studious in a halting-place
Betwixt Mortality and Angelhood.

Now far ahead, she paused awhile, then ran
Toward the left, and made as if she sought
To look behind a tree, or down a path
Of woodland invitation. Then I saw
Another come, a basket full of flowers
Upon her arm. The golden tint of these
Reminded me of Surrey daffodils
In days of yore, when beds of blossoming
(Not understood) prevented me from play,
Because my Mother often called to me
And begged my pinafore. (I thank her now.)
The women stopped to kiss, and she whose flowers
Had made my memory bloom, began to ask,
As clearly showed, if I were known to them.
The girl turned round, and underneath her palm
Looked long and hard at me. They kissed again,
And then the girl moved on toward the path.
The other drew a blossom from the store
Within her basket, held it on her lips,
And, motionless as marble, gravely stood
To watch me come across the level lawn;
But when perhaps no more than ninety yards
Withheld from me the colouring of her lips,
The Statue dropped the flower; yet even then
Remained a Statue. The basket likewise fell,
Rolled over, rocked a little, lay as stone.
One heartbeat more, and Mother, loud with love,
So quickly ran that, almost ere I knew,
The triumph and the tumult of her heart
Were beating on my own; her lips were held
As fast to mine as moss to roots of oak.

Now, having kissed my boy once more—once more,
I want to sit and spend my heart with him
Among the frolic memories of time
Endeared to me by Breathing Littleness.
Do you remember strawberries growing wild
Three fields away from home? And where we went
On many a Sabbath afternoon to tell
The ferns how much we loved them, Norman dear,
And ask a married blackbird or a thrush
To sing again his loveliest piece of song?
Do you remember when you tore my frock
By clinging while the adder raised his head
To daunt us near the camp of marigolds?
Can you recall—

How else could I have learnt
The style and greatness of that noble Land?
'Twas Heaven, in truth; for where my Mother dwells
She makes for me the one and only Heaven.