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Ella Wheeler Wilcox - The Room Beneath the Rafters
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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.
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