A Dream of Doubt [pp. 443-444]

1874.] A DREAM OF DOUBT. 443
A DREAM OF DOUBT.
1.
I stood upon a mountain side,
Beneath a pine-I could not rest And saw the distant dim divide,
With silvery morning at its crest.
How like, I thought, a fruit it is:
Day ripening from the mold of night The black and shapeless mold -to this
Most perfect bloom of purest light.
And while I thought, of radiant gold
I saw the graven apple flung
By envious hands, and idly rolled
The crimson-visaged gods among.
All this in clouds that wandering shaped
The thought for me- as echo words.
I saw the smoke that Ilium draped,
And Paris with his scattered herds.
And as I dreamed, an odor stole -
The spicy breath of redwood boughs -
Upon my weak and troubled soul,
Within its narrow, earthly house.
II.
And wondering I beheld in fantasy,
Beyond the yellow shoulders of the land,
Beyond the azure curving of the sea,
Beyond the drifting reaches of gray sand,
A dusty caravan, that winding lagged
Across a barren saddle of the hills
Down to a dark and empty vale that sagged
To dreaming Bethlehem and its shady rills.
And one lone fig made hands against the sky The sky of morning-and the moving air
Blew westward long gray beards, and far on high
There beamed a star most wonderfully fair.
Then voices from the earth said: "Lo!'tis dawn."
And angels in the heavens sung: "'Tis day."