THE ROOM BENEATH THE RAFTERS.

Sometimes when I have dropped to sleep, Draped in a soft luxurious gloom, Across my drowsing mind will creep The memory of another room, Where resinous knots in roof boards made A frescoing of light and shade, And sighing poplars brushed their leaves Against the humbly sloping eaves.

Again I fancy, in my dreams, I’m lying in my trundle bed; I seem to see the bare old beams And unhewn rafters overhead. The mud wasp’s shrill falsetto hum I hear again, and see him come Forth from his dark-walled hanging house, Dressed in his black and yellow blouse.

There, summer dawns, in sleep I stirred, And wove into my fair dream’s woof The chattering of a martin bird, Or rain-drops pattering on the roof. Or half awake, and half in fear, I saw the spider spinning near His pretty castle where the fly Should come to ruin by-and-by.

And there I fashioned from my brain Youth’s shining structures in the air. I did not wholly build in vain, For some were lasting, firm and fair. And I am one who lives to say My life has held more gold than gray, And that the splendor of the real Surpassed my early dream’s ideal.

But still I love to wander back To that old time and that old place; To tread my way o’er memory’s track, And catch the early morning grace, In that quaint room beneath the rafter, That echoed to my childish laughter; To dream again the dreams that grew More beautiful as they came true.