It is a dream. 
It is a dream, my love; see how
The ripples quiver at the prow,
And all the long reflections shake
Unsteadily beneath the lake. 
The mists about the uplands show
Dim violet towers that come and go. 
Phantasmagoric palaces
Rise trembling there,
As though one breath of waking weather
Would crash their airy walls together
With sudden stress,
While silent detonations shook the air—­
Vast fabrics toppling to the ground
And vanishing without a sound. 
Ah, love, these are not what we deem;
It is a dream.

II.

Let us dream on, then,——­dream and die
Ere the dream pass. 
Let us for once, like idle flowers,
Let slip the unregarded hours,
Like the wise flowers that lie
Unfretted by a feeble thought,
Future and past alike forgot,
Drinking the dew contentedly
In the cool grass.

III.

Look yonder where the clouds float; could we glide
As they, across the sky’s blue shoreless tide,
What better were it than to dream
Across yon lake and into this still stream?

IV.

Trees and a glimpse of sky! 
And the slow river, quiet as a pool! 
And thou and I—­and thou and I—­
Kiss me!  How soft the air is and how cool!

THE WANDER-LOVERS.

Down the world with Marna! 
That’s the life for me! 
Wandering with the wandering wind,
Vagabond and unconfined! 
Roving with the roving rain
Its unboundaried domain! 
Kith and kin of wander-kind,
Children of the sea!

Petrels of the sea-drift! 
Swallows of the lea! 
Arabs of the whole wide girth
Of the wind-encircled earth! 
In all climes we pitch our tents,
Cronies of the elements,
With the secret lords of birth
Intimate and free.

All the seaboard knows us
From Fundy to the Keys;
Every bend and every creek
Of abundant Chesapeake;
Ardise hills and Newport coves
And the far-off orange groves,
Where Floridian oceans break,
Tropic tiger seas.

Down the world with Marna,
Tarrying there and here! 
Just as much at home in Spain
As in Tangier or Touraine! 
Shakespeare’s Avon knows us well,
And the crags of Neufchatel;
And the ancient Nile is fain
Of our coming near.

Down the world with Marna,
Daughter of the air! 
Marna of the subtle grace,
And the vision in her face! 
Moving in the measures trod
By the angels before God! 
With her sky-blue eyes amaze
And her sea-blue hair!

Marna with the trees’ life
In her veins a-stir! 
Marna of the aspen heart
Where the sudden quivers start! 
Quick-responsive, subtle, wild! 
Artless as an artless child,
Spite of all her reach of art! 
Oh, to roam with her!