The Dream Picturesque
The city is rich, the idyll too,
The one home to in-service din,
And bustle of the one and the two,
Of bruvs and brood, a creatural win,
Yet from ayond the civil design,
A voice would call to a restless mind,
To tread from stone to verdant dell,
To the other, the home of Meadwise kin.
Vicinal was the solitude,
Toilsome, yet, the civil home,
Such the trudging habitude,
Thus so near and yet away,
Over the hills, seven jewelled,
Beyond the seventh fluent fall,
In the Valley of the Seven Blues,
Home to the lownest one of all.
Thither set out the earnest soul,
Not a trifling of a sighing sound,
Glissading on the level old,
Beyond the smooth and stony mound,
With light feet on the streets he strolled,
Lurking through the city gates,
Far ahead the mighty river rolled,
He paddled with a nimble gait.
Beyond lay the rustic earth,
Untouched by dextrous human hand,
He stepped onto the grassy verge,
The languid bloom of life unmanned,
Wandering under linden leaves,
On a sparsely sylvan primrose path,
Hindward lay the city, now small,
Ahead, the vale in moonlit bath.
He beheld the Ring of Seven Blues,
Amid the breezy, verdant dell,
Glistened the grass in mystic hues,
Of which scarce do fables tell,
Trancelike was the Elysium,
The moon, the sun of dawn but bright,
And yet the highs were midnight blue,
Drest by twinkling starry light.
In a trice, a starbeam, white and long,
Crystalline, clear of milky trail,
Tuneful notes of heavenly song,
Whelmed him in leisurely gait,
The breeze amped to divinely wind,
When beam had touched telluric cool,
It sang of bliss of polestar kind,
To join the prince wh’was free of fate.
The course of bliss was his human form,
Say aye to the behest he did,
With taintless yield, featherly warm,
Wishing an ayond sorrowless,
Alone the truth, truth alone,
Earthly vice the light had quelled,
Of the song he wished a soaring hone,
And his remnant being be morrowless.
Until he heard an earthly ring,
The light in wane with faster pace,
The scenic vale now sundering,
His eyes ajar saw a homely line,
Repose to rise, the steady run,
Mindful of the chirps of dawn,
The worldly whole, the astral none,
He arose to life, saturnine.
