To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

(In the Realm of Gloriana, III)

Well are you sated, then, my friend?
You rest upon a golden bed of straw
Strewn on the forest floor,
And the faire intangible pours over you.
Your eyes have feasted, and your body
Tasted new delights,
And now you, resting from the sights you sought
And found --
All vulnerable and spent --
Are ravished by the sounds.

In darkness, sweet moanings,
Music of the shadows,
Rustlings, movings --
Ancient airs wafting songs of celebration
Of the wheel of life and time,
Of birth and growth, of sex and death
And of the wax and wane of sap and vigor.

A whisper -- heard in chorus
Of a thousand thousand voices:
"This is our destiny - yes, all of us -
To come, to pass
Like wraiths within the seer's glass,
To taste but briefly of our golden age
And then descend into the memory
As coins into a sacred well.
'Tis well; 'tis faire --
We revel and we disappear, and yet
We shall arise again when comes the Call;
A mighty hand shall draw us forth
And shape us to a great design
With magic weavings ...."