In Dreamland. I cannot go back to the past, dear, Nor dream as I dreamed before, Ere the sunlight had left me for ever, When you smiled in my dreams as of yore. I know it was only a dream, dear, That has passed with the spring-tide away ; It was scarcely your fault if I deemed it No dream when we played our play. It was not your fault that I woke, dear, And the pain of the waking is mine ; It has never brought sadness or sorrow To that golden head of thine. For my life was so fresh and so fair, dear, And you loved me (it was but a dream), And my life was a poem, made glorious By a vision which did but beam On my path, to make darkness more dark, dear ; And now that all dreaming is done, With me stays its memory for ever ; It was not your love that I won, But hers whom I met long ago, dear, In the far-past days of my youth, When I wandered for ever in dreamland, And trusted in honour and truth. I shall never meet more in this world, dear ; My dream-love you slew long ago, When you shattered the vision one spring-tide : She is buried beneath the snow. If a day it should ever dawn, dear, In that land where all care is past, And we stand face to face in the future, As once we stood in the past, It will not be you I shall greet, dear, But my dream that I loved long ago : She will rise from the grave where I laid her, No matter how deep the snow ’Mid which I laid her to rest, dear, For in heaven ’twill all be past, And my dream, with her face like yours, dear, I shall know her, and find her at last. Florence Peacock.