A Dream of Fair Women All the beautiful demanded one Who wanders in the twilight wood; The drowsy world in sweetly held, and stood; She glimmers in a cloud of leaves, a heart, And dances with every wind and foam in the soft expanse.

A marble through the distance vows, from sun To stone of dew, from tree to breeze e’er where; Yet in the dreaming, circles weave around, And rising paths begin to fade, and dare fairly clear Whatever surely twinkles through the night’s ambrosial fair.

A dream, with waking woe, of songs, Will haunt the petals of the roses near, For I shall gather, when the day ‘mid thorns, Vanishing where draping suns may twine around the ear.

For I have known of beauty, and heard the things And shaped the love so sweet, the sight I’d lost; Until the evenings veil turns quietly apparent, And where the silences aren’t coffined into heads.

So here I end the tale of dreams, Let all who pass by heed my heart so great, Through worlds of dreams so bright and free.

For many times in waking, shadows sharp begin, And walk beneath the trees to meet the air, As one with echoing hearts, we pass through woods so dear. Away from them, upon the breeze, my tender petals go.

• Alfred Lord Tennyson