'TWAS buried deep:

I did not weep;

I had forgot.

But Love did not forget to keep

What Love had wrought;

And when you spake,--

Wan, half-awake,

Dim as a daylight flame,

Up from my Memory's oubliette, the old Dream softly came.

I cried, "O shrunken form!

O wrinkled mummy face!

Once thou wert rosy-warm,

And fair, and full of grace;

Now art a thing to gibe at in the sun,

To mock and shun,

Go back and dream in thy cold dwelling-place,

Go back and sleep,

Down in thy dungeon deep!

"Go back!" I cried, "for all my dreams are done!"

Sheeted in shame,

With chin-clothes of despair,

Shambling along it came,

All tottering and lame,

Up to the upper air;

And, as a soul that perishes with drouth

Might stoop to drink

At a fountain's brink

With famished mouth,

So knelt and drank it of your beauty there.

--O wonder!--as it gazed it grew

Like a faint rose refreshed with dew

Most sweet and fresh,

Spirit and flesh,

With leaping heart, and eyes of blue;

And in its mouth, and brow, and hair,

Your mouth, and brow, and hair, I knew;

And suddenly I was aware

That ye were one, not two:

You were the Dream of all things fair,

You were my Dream, my Dream was you;

You were the answer to my prayers,

You were my Dream of Love come true.