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,

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 eter 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.

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.