Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Lyrics and Verse Tales. IV. Her Dream

Emily H. Hickey (1845–1924)

FOLD your arms around me, Sweet,

As against your heart my heart doth beat.

Kiss me, Love, till it fade, the fright

Of the dreadful dream I dreamt last night.

Oh, thank God, it is you, it is you,

My own love, fair and strong and true.

We two are the same that, yesterday,

Played in the light and tost the hay.

My hair you stroke, O dearest one,

Is alive with youth and bright with the sun.

Tell me again, Love, how I seem

‘The prettiest queen of curds and cream.’

Fold me close and kiss me again;

Kiss off the shadow of last night’s pain.

I dreamt last night, as I lay in bed,

That I was old and that you were dead.

I knew you had died long time ago,

And I well recalled the moan and woe.

You had died in your beautiful youth, my sweet;

You had gone to rest with untired feet;

And I had prayed to come to you,

To lay me down and slumber too.

But it might not be, and the days went on,

And I was all alone, alone.

The women came so neighbourly,

And kissed my face and wept with me;

And the men stood still to see me pass,

And smiled grave smiles, and said, ‘Poor lass!’

Sometimes I seemed to hear your feet,

And my grief-numbed heart would wildly beat;

And I stopt and named my darling’s name—

But never a word of answer came.

The men and women ceased at last

To pity pain that was of the past;

For pain is common, and grief, and loss;

And many come home by Weeping Cross.

Why do I tell you this, my dear?

Sorrow is gone now you are here.

You and I, we sit in the light,

And fled is the horror of yesternight.

The time went on, and I saw one day

My body was bent and my hair was gray.

But the boys and girls a-whispering

Sweet tales in the sweet light of the spring,

Never paused in the tales they told

To say, ‘He is dead and she is old.’

There’s a place in the churchyard where, I thought,

Long since my lover had been brought;

It had sunk with years from a high green mound

To a level no stranger would have found;

But I—I always knew the spot;

How could I miss it, know it not?

Darling, darling, draw me near,

For I cannot shake off the dread and fear.

Hold me so close I scarce can breathe;

And kiss me, for, lo, above, beneath,

The blue sky fades, and the green grass dries,

And the sunshine goes from my lips and eyes.

O God—that dream—it has not fled—

One of us old, and one of us dead!