Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A DREAM OF LIFE, by HUMBERT WOLFE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A DREAM OF LIFE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Our time-career is yon dark cloud
Last Line: God grant! Shall mock their glance.
Subject(s): Dreams; Grief; Life; Tears; Time; Nightmares; Sorrow; Sadness


OUR Time-career is yon dark cloud
That the imperial sun allowed
To float a little while,
And melt away -- our Being true
The arching heaven of boundless blue,
Whose beams for ever smile.

Yet the sad gloom whose vapours stain
The glorious azure is not vain,
But fraught with boon for Earth;
To shed revival, shade from glow,
And temper light, that all below
May feel its quickening worth.

Ah me! is life so full of tears,
So fraught with passion, grief, and fears?
Then may the drops that rain
From these sad eyes, from this soft heart,
New vigour to the world impart,
True weal, and fertile gain!

So let me live that all may count
The effluence from this vital fount,
Refreshment and not gloom:
May no rude deluge from it stream;
No thunder roar, no lightning gleam,
Be harbinger of doom!

Nay, let my life drop glistening dew,
And let sweet sunbeams struggling through
Oft witness to the Light;
At darkest be it glorified
And golden rimmed, since all behind
The veil is radiance bright.

May wanderers o'er Earth's torrid waste
Beneath its shadow sit and taste
Cool ease and sweet repose;
Friends resting there more friendly wax;
Stern enemies their frown relax,
And rise no longer foes.

Yet, Source of all things! life should be
Upwafted ever, nearer Thee,
As you calm cloud ascends:
And if this brooding being kissed
Earth once, too like a clinging mist,
So nevermore it blends;

So nevermore like a damp pall
May it press down and darken all
That underneath it pine;
But rising as it speeds or drifts,
True to the cradling wind that lifts,
Grow more and more Divine.

May charmed dreamers gaze above,
And lovers learn a holier love
From tinge, and glow, and ray:
Let strange entrancing lights and hues
Bring Heaven before the hearts that muse,
The eyes that upward stray.

Yet they who look shall look again
Ere long, and feel the quest is vain:
Absorbed in the Expanse
Whence it appeared, my vanished life,
Its melting free from storm and strife,
God grant! shall mock their glance.





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