The Room Beneath The Rafters

Sometimes when I have dropped asleep, Draped in soft luxurious gloom, Across my drowsy mind will creep The memory of another room, Where resinous knots in roofboards 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 hornet's shrill falsetto hum I hear again, and see him come Forth from his mud-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 good 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 thread my way o'er Memory's track, And catch the early morning's 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.