Camera Work: A Photographic Quarterly (1903 (Heft 2))

DAWN-FLOWERS.¹
(TO MAURICE MAETERLINCK.)
WEIRD PHANTOMS rise in the dawn-wind's blow,
In the land of shadows the dawn-flowersgrow;
The night-worn moon yields her weary glow
To the morn-rays that over the dream-waste flow.
OH, to know what the dawn-wind murmurs
In chapel of pines to the ashen moons;
What the forest-well whispers to dale and dell
With her singular, reticent runes!
To know the plaint of each falling leaf
As it whirls across the autumnal plain;
To know the dreams of the desolate shore
As sails, like ghosts, pass o'er the dawn-lit main!
To know, oh, to know
Why all life’s strains have the same refrain
As of rain
Beating sadly against the window-pane!
WE do not know and we can not know,
And all that is left for us here below
(Since " songs and singers are out of date”
And the muses have met with a similar fate)
Is to flee to the land of shadows and dreams,
Where the dawn-flowers grow
In the dawn-wind’s blow,
As morn-rays over life's dream-waste flow
To drown the moon in their ambient glow.
ENVOY.
OH, gray dawn-poet of Flanders,
Though in this life we ne’er may meet,
I'll linger where thy muse meanders
To strew these dawn-flowers at her feet.

S. H.

¹Lines suggested by Mr. Steichen’sprint “Dawn-flowers.”