To rest they went. 
And all night long the snowdrop glimmered white
Amid the dark, unconscious and unseen.

Before the sun had crowned his eastern hill
With its world-diadem, they woke.

I looked
Out of the windows of the inner dream,
And saw the edge of the sun’s glory rise
Eastward behind the hills, the lake-cup’s rim. 
And as it came, it sucked up in itself,
As deeds drink words, or daylight candle-flame,
That other sun rising to light the dream. 
They lay awake and thoughtful, comforted
With yesterday which nested in their hearts,
Yet haunted with the sound of grinding wheels.

THE OUTER DREAM.

And as they lay and looked into the room,
It wavered, changed, dissolved beneath the sun,
Which mingled both the mornings in their eyes,
Till the true conquered, and the unreal passed. 
No walls, but woods bathed in a level sun;
No ceiling, but the vestal sky of morn;
No bed, but flowers floating ’mid floating leaves
On water which grew audible as they stirred
And lifted up their heads.  And a low wind
That flowed from out the west, washed from their eye
The last films of the dream.  And they sat up,
Silent for one long cool delicious breath,
Gazing upon each other lost and found,
With a dumb ecstasy, new, undefined. 
Followed a long embrace, and then the oars
Broke up their prison-bands.

And through the woods
They slowly went, beneath a firmament
Of boughs, and clouded leaves, filmy and pale
In the sunshine, but shadowy on the grass. 
And roving odours met them on their way,
Sun-quickened odours, which the fog had slain. 
And their green sky had many a blossom-moon,
And constellations thick with starry flowers. 
And deep and still were all the woods, except
For the Memnonian, glory-stricken birds;
And golden beetles ’mid the shadowy roots,
Green goblins of the grass, and mining mice;
And on the leaves the fairy butterflies,
Or doubting in the air, scarlet and blue. 
The divine depth of summer clasped the Earth.

But ’twixt their hearts and summer’s perfectness Came a dividing thought that seemed to say:  “Ye wear strange looks.” Did summer speak, or they?  They said within:  “We know that ye are fair, Bright flowers; but ye shine far away, as in A land of other thoughts.  Alas! alas!

“Where shall we find the snowdrop-bell half-blown? 
What shall we do? we feel the throbbing spring
Bursting in new and unexpressive thoughts;
Our hearts are swelling like a tied-up bud,
And summer crushes them with too much light. 
Action is bubbling up within our souls;
The woods oppress us more than stony streets;
That was the life indeed; this is the dream;
Summer is too complete for growing hearts;
They need a broken season, and a land