My Maid Of Dreams

By Nora May French

Now foliaged darkness of low hills is
    kissed
With threaded pearl slim-white as
    maiden’s wrist;
Now with the opal films of earliest
    mist
My Maid of Dreams comes to me . . .
    Milky fair,
Her face of changeful lights that
    shame the morn,
And twin blue hyacinths in her eyes
    are born,
Dawn glimmers phosphor-pale upon
    her hair.
      .     .     .     .     .     .     .
Her face floats up to me thro’ waters
    dark,
Beneath the wrinkled clearness whitely
    seen;
And filtering shafts of yellow noon-
    tide mark
Her gleaming fingers, glimpsed in flick-
    ering green.
      .     .     .     .     .     .     .
The air grows jewel-red in widening
    spheres
From day’s deep heart low burning
    in the West.
Sweet airs, blow cool the breath of
    earth’s first tears--
Blow me my Maid of Dreams . . .
    Ah, dearest best!
Flame-lit thou comest thro’ the silent
    land,
My poppy-crowned, dusk-eyes with vi-
    sioned night!
Lead me, oh maid, with touch of guid-
    ing hand,
To lands unknown . . . to realms of
    new delight.

Appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Feb. 19, 1900, and was signed "Nora May French."
-- Pamela Herr