Edgar Lee Masters

The Vision

  Of that dear vale where you and I have lain
  Scanning the mysteries of life and death
  I dreamed, though how impassable the space
  Of time between the present and the past!
  This was the vision that possessed my mind;
  I thought the weird and gusty days of March
  Had eased themselves in melody and peace.
  Pale lights, swift shadows, lucent stalks, clear streams,
  Cool, rosy eves behind the penciled mesh
  Of hazel thickets, and the huge feathered boughs
  Of walnut trees stretched singing to the blast;
  And the first pleasantries of sheep and kine;
  The cautioned twitterings of hidden birds;
  The flight of geese among the scattered clouds;
  Night's weeping stars and all the pageantries
  Of awakened life had blossomed into May,
  Whilst she with trailing violets in her hair
  Blew music from the stops of watery stems,
  And swept the grasses with her viewless robes,
  Which dreaming men thought voices, dreaming still.
  Now as I lay in vision by the stream
  That flows amidst our well beloved vale,
  I looked throughout the vista stretched between
  Two ranging hills; one meadowed rich in grass;
  The other wooded, thick and quite obscure
  With overgrowth, rank in the luxury
  Of all wild places, but ever growing sparse
  Of trees or saplings on the sudden slope
  That met the grassy level of the vale;--
  But still within the shadow of those woods,
  Which sprinkled all beneath with fragrant dew,
  There grew all flowers, which tempted little paths
  Between them, up and on into the wood.
  Here, as the sun had left his midday peak
  The incommunicable blue of heaven blent
  With his fierce splendor, filling all the air
  With softened glory, while the pasturage
  Trembled with color of the poppy blooms
  Shook by the steps of the swift-sandaled wind.
  Nor any sound beside disturbed the dream
  Of Silence slumbering on the drowsy flowers.
  Then as I looked upon the widest space
  Of open meadow where the sunlight fell
  In veils of tempered radiance, I saw
  The form of one who had escaped the care
  And equal dullness of our common day.
  For like a bright mist rising from the earth
  He made appearance, growing more distinct
  Until I saw the stole, likewise the lyre
  Grasped by the fingers of the modeled hand.
  Yea, I did see the glory of his hair
  Against the deep green bay-leaves filleting
  The ungathered locks. And so throughout the vale
  His figure stood distinct and his own shade
  Was the sole shadow. Deeming this approach
  Augur of good, as if in hidden ways
  Of loveliness the gods do still appear
  The counselors of men, and even where
  Wonder and meditation wooed us oft,
  I cried, "Apollo"--and his form dissolved,
  As if the nymphs of echo, who took up
  The voice and bore it to the hollow wood,
  By that same flight had startled the great god
  To vanishment. And thereupon I woke
  And disarrayed the figment of my thought.
  For of the very air, magic with hues,
  Blent with the distant objects, I had formed
  The splendid apparition, and so knew
  It was, alas! a dream within a dream!