Poems (Radford)/To a Stranger

by Dollie Radford

To a Stranger

Last night I lay and dreamed of you,
 Through all the wind and rain,
So close a part I seemed of you,
 I could not wake again;
Sunk in your spirit, deep, so deep,
In the blue caverns of my sleep.

Your face seemed full of love for me
 You knew my heart's desire,
Vague and unquiet as the sea,
 For which I toil and tire
With prayer and pilgrimage and tears,
Through all the rolling of the years,

You welcomed me with gentle hands,
 As one expected long,
The earth was made of heavenly lands,
 And life an angel-song,
Fervent and full from rise to fall,
With God's great music through it all.

How came it to be you I sought,
 In the wide realm of sleep?
Remote from all my waking thought,
 As the two ways we keep
Are distant, with dark growths between,
Making each day a surer screen.

And now you draw me with a spell
 I have no power to break,
My lonely heart alone knows well
 How it must ache and ache:
I pray you do not pass to-day,
Till I have dreamed my dream away!