Classic Poem

Ah, each man bears his Dome of Dreams —
A picture dome
Whereon are painted homely cares,
Defeats and triumphs and despairs;
A gallery thronged with wider themes
Than those of Rome.

The pictures on this Dome of Dreams
Are memories.
Young Barefoot wandering through the dew,
Through daisied fields when life was new,
By woodland paths, by lilied streams
And blossomed trees.

The picture of a maid at school
With floating hair:
Transfigured in the mist is she
On that dim shore of memory,
Life's dewiness about her, cool
And pure and fair.

The picture of a road that leads
From an old home:
A boy that from a wooded swell
Looks through his tears and waves farewell —
Then down through unknown hills and meads
Afar to roam.

The pictures of the long, long way
He travelled far;
Fair fruited hillsides slanting south,
Baked herbless uplands smit with drouth,
And night paths with no gleam of day —
Without a star.

And pictures of wide-sleeping vales
And storm-tossed waves;
Of valleys bathed in noonday peace,
Of sheltered harbors of release;
And glimpses of receding sails;
Of open graves.

And pictures of fair islands set
In golden foam;
And pictures of black wrecks upcast
On barren crags by many a blast —
But on! Life paints more pictures yet
Upon that dome.