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Robert Laurence Binyon - The Dream—House
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Often we talk of the house that we will build
 For airier and less jostled days than these
 We chafe in, and send Fancy roaming wide
 Down western valleys with a choosing eye
 To hover upon this nook or on that,
 And let the mind, like fingers pressing clay,
 Shape and reshape the mould of an old desire,
 Spur jogging Time, conjure slow years to days,
 Until tall trees, like those far fabled walls,
 Rise visibly to the mind`s music. Here
 We scoop a terrace under hanging woods
 Upon the generous slope of a green hill
 That gazes over alluring distances;
 Listen to our merry children at their play,
 And see the shadow lengthen from our roof
 On plots of garden. Fancy, busy still,
 Sows colours for the seasons in those plots,
 And matches or contrasts the chosen leaves
 That are to shade our saunters; the clean boughs
 Of aromatic walnut; the wild crab
 With, after snows of blossom, fiery fruit;
 And beeches of a grander race beyond them
 Withdrawing into uninvaded wood;
 But, farther down, our orchard falls to where
 The stream makes a live murmur all day long.
 Man is a builder born: not for the shell
 That makes him armour against stripping wind
 And frost and darkness; for befriending roof
 And walls to sally from, a bread--getter.
 No, but as out of mere unmeaning sound
 And the wild silence he has made himself
 Marvellous words and the order of sweet speech,
 Breathing and singing syllables, that move
 Out of the caverns of his heart like waves
 Into the world beyond discovery; so
 Builds he, projecting memory and strong hope
 And dear and dark experience into stone
 And the warm earth he digs in and reshapes,
 Dyeing them human, and with a subtle touch
 Discovering far kinships in the sky
 And the altering season, till the very cloud
 Brings its own shadow as to familiar haunts,
 And the sun rests as on a place it sought.
 Earth also as with a soft step unperceived
 Draws from her ancient silence nearer him,
 Sending wild birds to nest beneath his eaves
 Or to shake songs about him as he walks,--
 Shy friends, the airy playmates of his joy.
 Caesars may hoist their towers and heave their walls
 Into a stark magnificence, impose
 The aggrandised image of themselves, as trumpets
 Shattering stillness. We`ll not envy them,
 While there`s a garden to companion us
 And earth to meet us with her gentle moss
 Upon our own walls. They may entertain
 Prodigally a thousand guests unpleased;
 But we have always one guest that is ever
 Lovely and gracious and acceptable,
     Light. As I lay upon a hill--top`s turf
 I watched the wide light filling the round air
 And I was filled with its felicity.
 O the carriage of the light among the corn
 When the glory of the wind dishevels it!
 How it filters into the dim domes of trees
 Spilt down their green height, shadows dropping gold!
 How beautiful its way upon the hills
 At morning and at evening, when the blades
 Of grass blow luminous, every little blade!
 How the flowers drink it, happy to the roots!
 This lovely guest is ours to lodge; and we
 Will build for it escapes and entrances
 And corners to waylay the early beam
 And keep its last of lingering: here to accept
 Its royalty of fullness; there to catch
 In dusky cool one lustre on the floor
 Doubling itself in echoed radiances
 Mellow as an old golden wine, on wall
 And ceiling: oh, how gentle a touch it has
 On choice books, and smooth--burnished wood, in such
 Human captivity! When the winds roar over,
 What sudden splendours toss into our peace
 With reappearing victories! O the glory
 Of morning through a doorway on the hair,
 Neck, arms, young movements of a laughing child!
 O mystery of brightness when we wake
 In the night--hush and see upon the blind
 The trembling of the shadow of a tree
 Kissed by the moon, that from the buried light
 Wooes ghostliness of beauty, and receives
 And whispers it to all the world asleep.
 Whatever it be made of, this dreamed home
 Upon a hill, I know not in what vale,
 Shall be a little palace for the light
 To stray and sleep in and be blest for it.
 So thought I: then I thought, O my dear Love,
 Surely I am that house, and you the light.
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