THE DREAMER | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 27, 1883

THE DREAMER.

ALL day the white-haired woman sits Beside the open door and knits; No living thing her dim eye sees, As busy with old memories She dreams her dreams of what has been, And knits her old time fancies in.

She thinks of those who long ago Went out across the threshold low; How many times her listening ear Had thought familiar footsteps near, And when she started up to find A dead leaf rustling in the wind;

But never as of those who lie Beneath the wide and tender sky, With folded hands and quiet breast All wrapped about with peace and rest. She thinks of them. For her they tread The green earth with her. None are dead.

Though years have fallen like the leaves About the graves where summer weaves Her grass-fringed coverlet, to keep Safe hid from all the ones asleep, She sees them all. No grass nor mold Can hide the ones she loved of old.

She talks with them. When brown-winged bee Makes merry in the locust tree, She thinks he comes and sits with her, Whose voice was love's interpreter. O dreamer! young again to-day, What matter if your hair is gray?

Sometimes she thinks that round her knee Her children play in happy glee. And when they tired and sleepy grow, She sings some songs of long ago, And on her loving mother's breast She rocks the little ones to rest.

O dreamer! knitting all the day Your dreams in with your stitches gray, Yours is a happy, happy heart— A haunted world from ours apart— The years that turn your tresses gray Have given you back your youth to-day. —Selected.