The Questing Host
With sad thoughts drifting into dreams, with tired heart,
I turn from the white candles and the open page,
And on worn tapestries of immemorial age
See knight and saint and lady play their part.
Among the tall, straight, woven trees and turrets gray,
These hunt the leaping deer, and these make silent love;
And one ecstatic maid beneath a haloed dove,
With white face bends upon a book to pray.
And near them hover in the still, dream-haunted room,
The spirits of forgotten times, the host of night:
Helen's red lips and glorious eys are faded quite,
And Palomide beneath his shadowy plume
Rides through gaunt spectral woods upon his hopeless quest;
Unnumbered phantoms of old heroes hurry by;
The candles flicker, the dreams vanish, and I cry;
"Not even in dreams is any peace or rest."
share this page
