[BNP/E3, 31A – 78-80]

80

Summerland

One day, Time having ceased,

     Our lives shall meet again,

From Place and Name released.

     Only that shall remain

Of each of us that may

Seem natural to that Day.

There we will newly love,

     Wondering at the old mood

With which love did us move,

     When pain and solitude

Were what each soul had got

For its contingent lot.

There, heaven being between us

     And touch a real thing,

The texture luminous

     Of our true lives will bring

God into our love like breath.

Nowhere will there be death.

The need to suffer and sigh,

     The inevitable cares,

The awaiting and the cry

     That goes from joy to tears -

These have no need to be

In love's eternity.

The hours shall make our love

     Grow younger, not more old.

Some trick of time shall move

     Wont even to truer gold.

Regret shall not be aught

Possible there to thought.

That region light‑suspended

     Under truer blue skies

Shall let our souls feel blended,

     Yet be true unities.

Nought shall have power to fret

Our hearts to tire of it.

A golden land where God

     Stayed a Day of His Time,

Not as the world, where not

     A moment did he abide,

And where His passing left

The sense of aught bereft.

My heart, that thinks of this,

     Pines, for it is nowhere,

[79r]

81

And she that meets my bliss

     With her new old love there -

She is unreal as all

That to this verse I call.

Yet who knows? Perhaps this

     Is not wishing, but seeing.

Perhaps this love, this bliss,

     This conscious glad not‑being

Is some reality

Through fancy seen by me.

Perhaps it casts a spell

     From where it can be found.

What is impossible?

     Where is God's bourne and bound?

Why, if I dream this, may

Not this be mine one day?

Who knows what our dreams are?

     Who knows all that God makes?

Perhaps life doth but mar

     The immediate truth that takes

Its beauty from being dreamed.

Nothing e’er merely seemed.

Somewhere where God is nearer

     These things are een now true.

Oh, let me be no fearer

     That this may not be so!

All is more strange than that

Small glimpse of it we get.

Mine eyes are wild with joy

     Because I have these thoughts.

They cannot tire nor cloy

     Because God ever allots

To each high thing the power

To weigh not on its hour.

My flower garden is

     Full of new flowers now.

My lips are kissed by bliss

     Because I know not how.

My heart fails and I swim

Within a luminous rim.

A halo of hope comes round

     My soul. I am that child

That cries: Lo! I have found

     This flower strange and wild.

The unknown flower I have

Grew on my dead dreams' grave.

[80r]

82

A trembling sense of being

     More than my sense can hold,

A bird of feeling seeing

     The great, earth‑hidden gold

Of the approaching dawn,

A breath, a light, a swoon,

A presence interwoven

     With rays of other light,

A spell, a power untroven

     Of my more clear delight,

I faint, I fade, I seem

Myself to be my dream.

And if this be not so,

     Oh, God, make it now be!

Let me not find more woe

     Because I so dreamed Thee!

Let aught for which I pine

Merit being divine.

Let this resemble heaven

     And be my home for e'er,

Even if for e'er mean living

     But this hour really fair.

An hour in God shall be

Enough eternity.