Page:Poems Shore.djvu/144

To one child sister listening reverently,
In words but vaguely understood she told,
With sweetly serious voice and lustrous eye,
All of her secret language could unfold.
"I pine away for ever for a dream,
A something found at night, by daylight lost,
So changing parts with life, its visions seem
The substance, and this waking world the ghost.
I love you all, and wonder what I do—
Thus strangely yearning for what is not you,
But yearning always. In my dream, my home
Rose up, a marble, white old Roman hall,
All echoing space, and sunlight, and the land,
It seemed, was Britain, Britain of old days,
Or such it grew upon my memory.
When I awoke—a square of waving grass,
Rich in the green luxuriance of its prime,
Blue with the dewy shine of hyacinths,
On three sides bowered with chestnut avenues,
Fronted the lovely mansion. I lived there,
Closed in from war and danger, friend and foe,
By guardian fairies who made everywhere
A wild small music, like to tinkling laughter;
And airy talks and rustlings followed after,
Amongst the rustling foliage, to and fro.
That calls back
A day of girlhood. Once, the first of June—

130