Clara G. Stillman, "Dark Dream" (1923)
I dreamed of warmth and darkness.
In a cold white land.
I stayed in the cold white land
But yet I traveled far;
Breathlessly I followed
A sombre-gleaming star
I lost it, I found it,
I saw what none could see,
Ways of golden beauty
Opened up for me.
Oh, beauty unknown, unguessed and unregarded,
Beauty flowering and burning behind white veils of silence!
There speech is music,
There dark eyes shine
Like velvet petals
In a golden wine.
There are ways of langour,
There glances caress,
There laughter wells a fountain
Of divine childlikeness.
There old Sorrow sits in the shade
With newborn Bitterness.
But sorrow and laughter and slave toil and free
Wove a web of music that hung from every tree,
Wove an ancient rhythm and a new way of seeing,
Wove a dance of atoms in the dim core of being.
I was close to earth then,
I had gone back.
Something lost ages since —
I was on the track
Of an old, strange loveliness.
Oh my eyes were clear!
I could feel, I could see
Beauty everywhere.
But just as I saw it
All of it was gone.
In a moon-drowned forest
I stood all alone.
Moon beams bleaching
Dead stalks of trees,
Night owls screeching
In a clammy breeze.
In the silver moon light
I could not see my star.
In the thorny fastness
I could not travel far
In a cold white land
I tried to tell my dream of warmth and darkness.
In a cold white land.
Published in The Crisis, April 1923