But a Dream

Yesterday’s curtain and today’s gold,
What rust might the future hold?
There is dust upon this roadway
Where night’s wings have gone astray
Past the wish of a Plutonian beam
That shines lone on the drying stream.
Is it but a dream?

What beauty must have stood here
Seraphim inscribe with but a tear.
I can view that once-bright paradise
Though swift I wake the vision dies.

And buried within that No Man’s Land
I reach for nails of a corpse’s hand.
Perhaps he had once been a friend,
For from his eyes, lights of memory descend.

If his cup was filled again
Thou doth know I’d drink his pain
That he might know the sun
And in joy watch the stream run:
What constellations I would shew
And never let that dear hand go
Or is it but a dream?