A Dream in November
Far, far away, I know not where, I know not how,
The skies are grey, the boughs are bare, bare boughs in flower:
Long lilac silk is softly drawn from bough to bough,
With flowers of milk and buds of fawn, a 'broidered shower.
Beneath that tent an Empress sits, with slanted eyes,
And wafts of scent from censers flit, a lilac flood;
Around her throne bloom peach and plum in lacquered dyes,
And many a blown chrysanthemum, and many a bud.
She sits and dreams, while bonzes twain strike some rich bell,
Whose music seems a metal rain of radiant dye;
In this strange birth of various blooms, I cannot tell
Which spring from earth, which slipped from looms, which sank from sky;
Beneath her wings of lilac dim, in robes of blue,
The Empress sings a wordless hymn that thrills her bower;
My trance unweaves, and winds, and shreds, and forms anew
Dark bronze, bright leaves, pure silken threads, in triple flower.
~~
Edmund Gosse (1849-1928)
from The Yellow Book, April 1894
[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]
No comments:
Post a Comment