I lay where stain of poppies crept
⁠Across a summer hill,
And drowsy droning grasses slept
With heavy heads, and wild bees kept
⁠Their slumbrous music still.

I lay and let my lazy dreams
⁠Drift with the idle breeze
Like leaves that float on autumn streams,
Gilded as fairy quinqueremes,
⁠Down to their magic seas.

I dreamed,—and all the fragrant earth
⁠Was as a sailing cloud.
From tears and sorrows, for my mirth
I wove a rainbow mist, and birth
⁠I folded in death's shroud.

I dreamed, but ever from the vale
⁠Beneath the sun-drowsed hills,
There rose the pulsing of the flail,
The hiss of scythes, the mower's hail,
⁠The hum of water mills:

And through the voices of the fields
⁠A sweeter voice that said,
"It is the coward heart that yields
To dreams its heritage, nor wields
⁠A sword unscabbarded."

Ah, voice that singeth bravely there,
⁠Dost think that dreams are peace?
Dost think it cowardice to dare
Eternity of blind despair
⁠For gold of fairy fleece?