Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Walter Murdoch (1874–1970). The Oxford Book of Australasian Verse. 1918.

75. The Dream of the Children

THE CHILDREN awoke in their dreaming

While earth lay dewy and still:

They followed the rill in its gleaming

To the heart-light of the hill.

Its sounds and sights were forsaking

The world as they faded in sleep,

When they heard a music breaking

Out from the heart-light deep.

It ran where the rill in its flowing

Under the star-light gay,

With wonderful colour was glowing

Like the bubbles they blew in their play.

From the misty mountain under

Shot gleams of an opal star;

Its pathways of rainbow wonder

Rayed to their feet from afar.

From their feet as they strayed in the meadow

It led through caverned aisles,

Filled with purple and green light and shadow

For mystic miles on miles.

The children were glad: it was lonely

To play on the hillside by day.

“But now,” they said, “we have only

To go where the good people stray.”

For all the hillside was haunted

By the faery folk come again;

And down in the heart-light enchanted

Were opal-coloured men.

They moved like kings unattended

Without a squire or dame,

But they wore tiaras splendid

With feathers of starlight flame.

They laughed at the children over

And called them into the heart.

“Come down here, each sleepless rover;

We will show you some of our art.”

And down through the cool of the mountain

The children sank at the call,

And stood in a blazing fountain

And never a mountain at all.

The lights were coming and going

In many a shining strand,

For the opal fire-kings were blowing

The darkness out of the land.

This golden breath was a madness

To set a poet on fire;

And this was a cure for sadness,

And that the ease of desire.

They said as dawn glimmered hoary,

“We will show yourselves for an hour.”

And the children were changed to a glory

By the beautiful magic of power.

The fire-kings smiled on their faces

And called them by olden names,

Till they towered like the starry races

All plumed with the twilight flames.

They talked for a while together

How the toil of ages oppressed,

And of how they best could weather

The ship of the world to its rest.

The dawn in the room was straying:

The children began to blink,

When they heard a far voice saying

“You can grow like that if you think.”

The sun came in yellow and gay light:

They tumbled out of the cot:

And half of the dream went with daylight

And half was never forgot.