Where the road climbs free from the marsh and the sea
To the last rose sunset-gleams,
Twixt a fold and a fold of the Kentish wold
Stands the Inn of a Thousand Dreams.
No man may ride with map for guide
And win that tavern-door ;
As none shall come by rule of thumb
To our blue-bells’ dancing-floor :
For no path leads through Churchyard Meads
And the fringes of Daffodil Wood,
To the heart of the glade where the flower-folk played
In the days when the gods were good.
Who hastes our wold with naught but gold,
Who seeks but food and wine,
The wood-folk wise shall blind his eyes
To the creaking tavern-sign ;
He shall know the goad of the folk of the road,
And his led wheels shall not find
The gabled beams that sheltered our dreams
In the nights when the gods were kind.
We had never a chart save our own sure heart
And the summoning sunset-gleams,
When you rode with me from the marsh and the sea
To the Inn of a Thousand Dreams.
No sign-post showed the curved hill-road
Our purring engines clomb,
From where dead forts of dying ports
Loomed gray against gray foam :
We had never a book for the way we took,
But the oast-house chimney-vanes
Stretched beckoning hands o’er the lambing-lands
To point us their Kentish lanes.
As certain-true our track we flew,
As nesting swiftsures flit;
By stream and down and county-town,
And orchards blossom-lit:
For Pan’s own heels were guiding our wheels,
And Pan’s self checked our speed
In the spire-crowned street where the by-ways meet,
For a sign of the place decreed.
Rose-impearlcd o’er a wonder-world
Glowed the last of the sunset-gleams;
And we knew that fate had led to the gate
Of the Inn of our Thousand Dreams.
Who needs must pique with kitchen-freak
His jaded appetite,
He shall not know our set cloth’s snow,
Our primrose candle-light:
We had never a need of the waiter-breed
Or an alien bandsman’s blare,
When we pledged a toast to our landlord host
As he served us his goodwife’s fare.
In right of guest, they gave their best:
No hireling hands outspread
White bridal-dress from linen-press,
To drape our marriage bed :
They had never a thought for the price we brought,
The simple folk and the fine,
Who made us free of their hostelry
In the nights when all dreams were mine.
When the trench-lights rise to the storm-dark skies
Where the gun-flash flickers and gleams,
My soul flies free o’er an English sea
To the Inn of a Thousand Dreams.
Once more we flit, hands passion-knit,
By marsh and murmuring shore,
By Tenterden and Bennenden,
To our own tavern-door ;
And again we go, where the sunsets glow
On the beech-tree’s silvern plinth,
Down woodpaths set with violet
And Spring’s wild hyacinth.
Once more we pass, by roads of grass,
To find for our delight
Trim garden-plots, and shepherd’s cots —
Half-timbered, black-and-white . . .
There is never one gash of a shrapnel-splash
On the walls of the street we roam,
Where the forge-irons ring for our welcoming
As the twilight calls us home.
Till the trench-lights pale on the gray dawn-veil
Of the first wan sunrise-gleams,
My soul would bide with its spirit-bride
At the Inn of a Thousand Dreams.
Once more I press, in tenderness,
(Dear God, that dreams were true !)
Your finger-tips against these lips
Your own red-rose lips knew,
In the middle night when your throat gleamed white
On your dark hairs’ pillowed sheen,
And your eyes were the pools that a moonbeam cools
For the feet of a faery queen.
Woman o’mine, heart’s anodyne
Against unkindly fate,
Love’s aureole about my soul,
Wife, mistress, comrade, mate !
I stretch ghost-hands from the stricken lands
Where my earth-bound body lies,
To touch your fair smooth brow, your hair,
Your lips, your sleeping eyes :
You are living-warm in the crook of my arm,
You are pearl in the firelight-gleams . . .
Till the blind night rocks with the cannon-shocks
That shatter a thousand dreams.
(Gilbert Frankau)
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Based on Topics: Love Poems, Man Poems, God Poems, Night Poems, Mind Poems, Death & Dying Poems, Soul Poems, Dreams Poems, Place Poems, Kings & Queens Poems, Thought & Thinking PoemsBased on Keywords: kentish, beech-tree, goodwife, plinth, hostelry, sign-post, red-rose, black-and-white, wood-folk, wonder-world, garden-plots