A Dream

What if I swim the earth and fly

Surrounded by the warmest cloud

And tarry, though I know not why,

With gliding birds and sing aloud

A newer tune: a melody

That only sweetness makes so free?

What if I lived within a world

That ancient hands already built

And rested near a fire curled

Around the log; and to the hilt

Of what was once before our eyes

And now indebted to the skies?

The dreamers with the abstract soul

Behold a concrete realism

Aligned on battlefields of old

And locked beneath a seal within

Their mission. And the dreamers stay,

To hope and wait another day.

How earnestly we search for ghouls

And monsters underneath our bed,

And long to vanquish hellish fools

Whom, in our minds, our peace they tread.

But textbooks and experience

Are false, for no one feels the end.