Explore "The Dream" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
/ My dream was such: / It seemed the afternoon / Of some deep tropic day, and yet a moon / Stood round and full with largeness of white gleams / High in a Heaven that knew not a sun's beams; / A vast, still Heaven of unremembered dreams. / Long, lawny lengths of perishable cloud / Hung in a West o'er rolling forests bowed; / Clouds raining colors, gold and violet / That, opening, seemed from hidden worlds to let / Down hints of mystic beauty and old charms / Wrought of frail creatures fair with silvery forms. / And all about me fruited orchards grew / Of quince and peach and dusty plums of blue; / Wan apricots and apples red with fire, / Kissed into ripeness by some sun's desire, / And big with juice; and on far, fading hills, / Down which it seemed a hundred torrent rills / Flashed leaping silver, vines and vines and vines / Of purple vintage swollen with cool wines; / Pale pleasant wines and fragrant as the June, / Their delicate life robbed from the foam-fair moon.
/ And from the clouds o'er this sweet world there dripp'd / An odorous music strange and feverish lipped, / That swung and swooned and panted in mad sighs, / Invoking at each wave sad rapturous eyes / Of limpid, willowy beings fair as night, / Decked spangly with crisp flower-like stars of white; / Dim honeyed booming of the boisterous bee / In purple myriads of faint fleurs-de-lis; / Of surf far-foaming on forgotten strands / Of immemorial seas in fairy lands / Of melting passion, who, with crimson lips / Of many shells laid to each swell that dips, / Sigh secret hope of unrequited love / In murmurous language to wan winds above.