Dream Tapestries

Dream Tapestries

by
Louise Morey Bowman
Author of “Moonlight and Common Day”

“Reason has moons, but moons not hers

Lie mirrored in her sea,

Confounding her astronomers

But, oh! delighting me.”

(Ralph Hodgson)

TORONTO: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY OF CANADA LIMITED, AT ST. MARTIN’S HOUSE MCMXXIV

Copyright, Canada, 1924
by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited, Toronto

Printed in Canada

TO
ARCHIBALD ABERCROMBY BOWMAN

I wish to acknowledge the courtesy of the editors of Poetry (Chicago), The Bookman (New York), The Canadian Forum, and The Canadian Magazine, in permitting me to reprint “Cold Tragedy,” “Bread and Fire,” “Moment Musical,” “Blue Moon,” and “Oranges.”

CONTENTS

THE WINGÉD CLOAK

I DRAW my cloak about me ...

Tattered and gray

To others it may be.

It seems to me

Of golden hue,

Broidered with mystic blue,

Woven each dawn anew,

And light as dew-ringed cobweb

On the grass.

Unscathed and joyously

In it I pass

Through drenching torrent, wind,

Fierce pitiless sun,

Till day is done.

Dream Tapestries

(1)
HYACINTH

HYACINTH dreams in the arbour ...

Just a crumpled mass of gray ...

Soft ashen hair and colourless skin,

Small, delicate hands blue-veined and thin ...

Hyacinth dreams in the arbour

And who shall say

What Hyacinth dreams to-day?

Hyacinth dreams in the arbour

And the stealthy pussy-cat creeps

To her silken lap in the soft green gloom.

Room for the pussy-cat, Hyacinth ... room!

Hyacinth dreams, in the arbour,

Of Life ... that steals and leaps

Like a panther out of the shadows ...

Hyacinth sleeps.

Hyacinth! Hyacinth! Open your eyes!

Your blue blue eyes like the Grecian seas!

Or Life will spring on your silken knees

And waken you with a wild surprise

Where you dream ... just a crumpled mass of gray.

Hyacinth dreams in the arbour.

Ah who shall say

What Hyacinth dreams to-day?

(2)
ENCHANTED WOOD

THROUGH the great glowing forest,

Green and dusky gold and ruddy brown,

Where sunbeams filter down

In showers of vibrant gold ...

Through the old, old wood

Passes the funeral pomp of the young, dead king.

Choristers sing

Strange, wailing, shuddering songs ...

Old chants, so old,

So desolate, drear.

Heavy, deep, purple velvet drapes the bier ...

Purple ... deep, passionate purple ...

A regal pall

Over the cold, young limbs, while the gold leaves fall

On the velvet pall.

On through the old wood moves

The great procession;

Deep, passionate purple draping the young, dead king;

And the choristers sing ...

And a small brown hare,

Startled, in quivering panic, scurries ahead

Leading the way for the king ...

The king who is dead.

In a bright green dell

Where they can see well,

Wait the butcher, the baker,

The candlestick maker.

“No more bread for he!”

Says the baker.

“No more meat for he!”

Says the butcher.

But the candlestick maker slaps his knee.

“Not such a bad day this for me!

No more meat and no more bread,

But candles to burn at his feet and his head.

Nor the living nor dead

Can’t get on without me!

And very very soon they’ll summon us three!”

“For the Feast!” grins the butcher

Wagging his head.

“For the Feast!” says the baker,

“They’ll soon need bread!”

“Men can’t do without we!”

They say, all three.

So the butcher, the baker,

The candlestick maker,

Watch the procession from the small green dell

Where they can all three see

Exceedingly well.

So the procession

Passed through the wood to the blue sea shore,

And they buried the king

Where the blue waves sing ...

And the young king rules no more.

But late that night through the lonely wood

Came a slim brown maid who had understood,

And mated her soul with the young, dead king,

With never a priest or mass or ring ...

And she carried a dagger with poisoned tip,

And pressed its point to her soft red lip ...

And she lay on the grave, and died.

Still at the turn of the year, men say,

Through the old, old forest in ghostly pageant

The funeral procession passes

Of the young, young king

Who is dead:

And the gold leaves fall

On his passionate purple pall,

And the small brown hare still scurries ahead

As if she were leading them all.

(3)
GREEN APPLES

THE garden lies spattered with wet green moonlight

Spilled from the night’s dark goblet;

And the wraith in the garden huddles mournfully

Silently watching,

Upon the broad marble seat,

Where white lilies and roses bloom.

Wine of pale silver-green drenches the garden.

The little gray wraith huddles mournfully,

Silently watching.

.......

On that broad marble seat to-day

Sat a beautiful lady ...

Through the hot golden hours of the long afternoon ...

Oh a beautiful lady!

With a warm wicked beauty of white, and of rose,

And of ebony.

Over her white breasts a long green scarf falling ...

Wet, bright, apple-green.

Out in the orchard, laughing

With clear, evil laughter ...

Ice laughter ...

She had gathered some little green apples

And bit them with strong white teeth.

“I am Eve! I am Eve in the garden ...

Come! Adam!”

And he followed ... poor, passionate lover ...

To the seat by the heavy white lilies and roses.

(Oh far far away lie the wise castle windows

Behind the rose gardens and lime trees!)

But after the lovers ... after them, swiftly, swiftly,

Like a fleeting gray shadow,

Speeds the little gray wraith ...

With feeble weak fingers of dampness

Pulling with tremulous touch at his heart-strings ...

Pricking like impotent tiny thorns;

Nipping, and pinching, and pricking

The shrivelled, black conscience of the rosy and beautiful lady.

See! from the shrivelled black conscience

One drop of bright, red blood,

As from prick of a rose thorn ...

And his heart-strings are drawn tight and knotted

With tiny, weak, slipping knots

Tied by feeble, damp fingers ...

Slipping ... slipping ... oh slipping!

But what does that matter?

For Time has come to the help of the gray wraith ...

Grave, gray Father Time with a handful of moments—

Dust? Ashes?...

He has set the rose-shrouded sundial in shadow.

.......

Now the broad marble seat is empty

Except where gray wraith has sunk down in the moonlight

Victorious.

Ah! ... the lady had dropped her bright, apple-green scarf,

And it stirs like a sinuous, long snake.

Is it only that one pointed corner is lifted

By the stealthy, stealing, night wind?

Slowly, slowly ... so feebly ...

The snake lifts itself with the wind’s help,

Revealing

A little green apple,

With some black dents where strong white teeth

Have bitten it.

And the small, gray wraith noiselessly moans and shudders.

But what matter?

For the long night passes.

Only the green scarf lies harmlessly, softly,

On the empty marble seat where the little gray wraith sits

And watches,

Victorious ...

Though the green wine of moonlight is drenching

The perilous garden.

Oranges

ORANGES

A SMALL New England village in the hills: ...

The date?

Oh, many, many years ago ... the season very late ...

November!

The conquering colours that a year must always hold

Have vanished.

Pale Northern Spring in tints of lilac, softest green and rose;

The short hot Summer’s purple and dark green and yellow gold;

The tawny richness of the harvest’s close ...

All past and vanquished in this sullen cold,

By sombre grays and browns, dead white and black.

The tall-spired meeting-house, the school,

The stiff white houses built by rigid rule,

Even the village store,

With hospitable, easily-opened door;

And their human owners reared in godly fear,

Austere, repressed,

Severe ...

How it all lies, before our modern eyes,

So grim.

Dressed in that rigid livery of nature’s gloom that suits it best.

Hear their stern hymn ...

Dignified, slow,

Sung in proud, solemn majesty of menace and woe.

“Our days as grass ... all earth is but a tomb” ...

What unfathomed gloom ...

Smouldering!

(2)

Keen bitter winds have stripped the great elm trees,

And swept the one long street

Ruthlessly neat;

Quite bare of all the withered, dead, brown leaves,

Except for small dry heaps that meet,

Trembling and mournfully rustling,

Caught

In the corners of the neat, white, picket fences;

Or drifting

Behind the pillars in the porch of the white meeting-house,

Unused through the long week

Except for Death.

How the winds shriek about the meeting-house!

(But wait before you shudder and turn away!)

With the keen, icy breath of the New England hills

Sharp in your nostrils,

Step over the threshold of the village store,

With its easily-opened door.

Breathe this different air,

Heavy with curiously mingled odours

As if another wind had blown in there

Heaps of rare

Drifted salvage ...

Some wild, rich wind from wild rich worlds beyond,

That folk cannot entirely withhold,

Even from a Puritan village long ago.

Beware ... ye righteous folk of old ...

Beware!

(3)

Here are great foreign boxes, wisely and deftly made,

That hold teas from the Orient, compactly laid;

And coffee beans.

Here spices, pungent and hot;

Tall, blue-wrapped cones of sugar; fine and coarse salt;

And finest quality of figured delaine;

Dark, serviceable calico dotted and plain;

Sheer delicate muslin, white as milk,

And thick black silk;

And broadcloth heavy and black;

And much, much more ...

Of quantity and quality no lack—

For this is the “general store,” of a prosperous man

Old and wealthy and wise,

In the village eyes.

Oh, Puritan New England would be clothed fittingly;

And Puritan palates know,

Both high and low

The wholesome savour of good food

When in the mood;

As well as very fine

Flavours in sermons by some “great divine;”

Or savour of ethics proved and tried,

And flavours in doctrines never very wide ...

But high and pure ...

(That you’ll acknowledge!)

God ... but they were sure ...

Those grim fine people of ours! ... another hymn ...

“Only such things as are godly and pure,

Saved from consuming wrath they shall endure.”...

Is that the echo of the bell

From the tall-spired white meeting-house?

Its bell is silent through the week, except for Death ...

Hear the wind shriek about the meeting-house!

But this small bell

Fastened above the door

Of the old village store,

Tinkles continually, where through the week,

They barter and buy and sell.

(4)

(In this short passing hour we shall see more ...)

He is a man of vision and breadth of mind ...