Page:The Yellow Book - 01.djvu/171

 II—A Dream of November

, far away, I know not where, I know not how,
 * The skies are grey, the boughs are bare, bare boughs in flower:

Long lilac silk is softly drawn from bough to bough,
 * With flowers of milk and buds of fawn, a broidered shower.

Beneath that tent an Empress sits, with slanted eyes,
 * And wafts of scent from censers flit, a lilac flood;

Around her throne bloom peach and plum in lacquered dyes,
 * And many a blown chrysanthemum, and many a bud.

She sits and dreams, while bonzes twain strike some rich bell,
 * Whose music seems a metal rain of radiant dye;

In this strange birth of various blooms, I cannot tell
 * Which spring from earth, which slipped from looms, which sank from sky.

Beneath her wings of lilac dim, in robes of blue,
 * The Empress sings a wordless hymn that thrills her bower;

My trance unweaves, and winds, and shreds, and forms anew
 * Dark bronze, bright leaves, pure silken threads, in triple flower.