"Dreams"

Dreams

The whole day long a spider spun

His thread of gold in the glowing sun.

With love in his heart and hope in his soul

He gathered the strands in one glist’ning whole.

With a patient touch and a tender care

He builded his castles, quaint and fair.

And never once did his courage tire,

In the night’s cool dusk or the noonday’s fire,

Till at last he knew, with a glad relief,

That his castle was welded from leaf to leaf,

Up in the old sweet apple tree—

As fair a thing as one cared to see.

“This is my dream!” the spider said,

As he paused to rest his weary head.

“I have worked it out with each golden strand,

With a patient heart and a careful hand;

“I have faltered never and fainted not,

Though the winds were keen and the suns were hot;

“I have tenderly set each thread of gold,

I have worked and waited—and I have grown old;

“And by all the hours and days that were spent,

I have honestly earned this sweet content.”

A butterfly drifted on listless wing—

The idle, beautiful, useless thing—

Down through the trees in the mellow sun,

Trifling the hours while the spider spun,

Drummed and drifted, with careless heart,

Into the spider’s work of art.

That golden fabric—that dream complete—

Was broken and hurled at the spider’s feet.

He tried to lift, with a trembling hand

And a fainting heart, each glittering strand,

To weave once more those threads of gold;

But his strength was feeble and he was old;

And though he mended and patched with care,

His dream was never again so fair.

The sweetest dream at a touch will fall;

Is not life a cobweb—we, dreamers, all?

"Dreams" printed in West Shore magazine on March 15, 1890. Clipping courtesy of the Ella Higginson Papers, Center for Pacific Northwest Studies, Heritage Resources, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA.