VISION

There have been seers of olden time who said, When dreaming men are rapt into the state Where only shadow people congregate, That never may they see the faces of their dead. But I have seen the faces I have lost, And none so clear and none so shadowless In all that moonshine dance and frolic stress Of dream futility, as some I loved the most. Not as I knew him last my brother stood, A man upon whose kindly face a stain Lay in the letters of life’s care and pain; But as a little lad, when all the world was good. High in the darkness of a pine, elate About our long-forgotten forest play, I hung, where he had found a squirrel’s dray: For I was twelve again, and he was only eight. I saw his boyhood’s look, as bright and fair As ever shone from huddle of a dream; Reality’s own self shall never seem More real than his young laugh and flaxen, Saxon hair. And waking old, I blessed the memory Of my child-brother’s unforgotten face, Thanking, as it had been a deed of grace, The tenderness of dreams that brought him back to me.