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The Spike: or, Victoria College Review, October 1913

Summer Dreams

page 15

Summer Dreams.

O'er the crumbling cliffs by the long lagoon,
Fringed with the growth of the lazy years,
The wild ducks wheel through the afternoon
To the lonely wastes of the distant meres.
Blue is the haze on the further hill,
And the homestead's far on the drowsy plain,
Wintered and swathed by the mists, until
Summer brought scent of the rose again.

Summer brought scent of the rose, and I,
Dreaming with face to the hazy blue,
Take no thought that the days glide by
So the gods be good though the years be few.
I weave life's web from a golden skein,
While the tuis chime to the passing hour
I dream life's dream as the Fate's ordain
Ere the thread fall loose like a long culled flower.

They tell how the gleaners gleaned of old
At the dawn of our guerdon of garnered years.
Ere night flung day to the days untold
The reapers flashed through the golden ears.
And the Reaper reaped where the sheaves were high,
And swept his swathe through the ungrown corn,
And gleaned and threshed through the years fled by,
And threshed and winnowed through days unborn.

And the grain was nought when the husks were shed,
Though the sheaves shone gold on the threshing floor.
The crizzle is rough on the years ahead,
And what is the gain from the years before?
Let me dream my dreams there is nought of woe,
Nothing of labour or hopes or pain;
Only a cry from the long ago—
Let me dream my dreams; I would sleep again.

—Piri Kerei.