A Dream of November

Far, 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.