Where you are:

Where the firelight flickers about your room, and the wind moans in the window, and the railway whistle over suburban roofs sounds hollow through the night;

Where you sit alone, and your thoughts spread making a great space about you;

Where you go forth at early morning with your bass of trusty tools, and your shadow shoots long before you down the frosty sparkling road—where you return at evening weary and out of humor with your life,

I dream the dream.

* * * * *

Where you open your eyes upon the world, and the beauty of it is upon you like the touch of beloved fingers;

Where the still flame burns in your soul, hidden away from the lightest breath of curious man; where the fire of consecration burns;

Yet the world closes in at last, and the lamp grows dim, and you lie like one half dead—of the bitter wounds of the faces of men and the taunts of existence;

I dream the dream: I dream the dream of the soul’s slow disentanglement.

* * * * *

Where you bend ankle-deep in mud all day in the rice plantations for a few half-pence; and the sun sails on—slow, slow—over the steamy land;

Where you walk following the old employ, shepherding sheep in the sweet crisp air of the high lands;

Where you stand pale and worn-eyed in the gloomy North amid the hot smell of machinery and the wicked scream of wheels; where you stand adjusting the threads, making the same answering movement of the hand for the millionth time;

Where you lie wedged in under a coal seam, working by the light of a tallow dip stuck in clay; or grind scythes all day, bending over, or race your wheel with the racing steel;

Where you sit high up on the fragrant mountains of Ceylon, with a great flood of moonlight at your feet, leaning your soul out from the verandah to the slow lifting and floating of palm-fronds in the exquisite breeze; and memories come trooping back upon you like the clouds of small yellow butterflies that along your coasts—between the sand and the sea—beat annually up against the wind;

Where you recline by your camp-fire in the African wild, watching the moonlight dances of the natives—the fantastic leaps of the dancer, the rhythmical hand-clapping of the spectators;

Where you drop down the river in the sun, past the dreaded mud-banks and wildernesses of mangroves;

I dream the dream.