Sweet Are The Dreams On The Breeze-Blown Strand

When autumn cloudlets fleck the sky
Straying southward like birds o’er the sea,
When the flickering sunlight on the dunes
Is pale, as seagrasses kissed by the spray,
Seagrasses that knew the summer of yesterday–
Sweet are the dreams on the breeze-blown strand!

Sweet are the dreams on the breeze-blown strand!
When cloud skiffs skim athwart the sky
And like a phantom of yesterday
The light house shimmers out to sea
Pale as the sand and the sea-worn spray
And the straggling sunlight on the dunes.

Like straggling sunlight on the dunes,
Like opal surges that wash the strand
With briny fragrance, adoom with the spray,
Like wander-birds that career the sky
To flowerlit isles of some Southern sea-
Such are the dreams of yesterday!

Alas, our dreams of yesterday,
Frail as the fragrance of the dunes,
Vain as dark jewels of the sea
Cast up on some glimmering strand,
They vanish like cloud sails on the sky,
Pale as seagrasses frowsed by the spray.

Pale as seagrasses kissed by the spray,
Is all this life of yesterday,
All our longings for clear blue skies
For the low cool plash on autumn dunes,
All our musings on tide-left strands
While birds wing southward o’er the sea.

Like birds winging southward o’er the sea
Scattered in air-like wasteful spray,
Sea-fancies fading on lonesome strands
Weary of storm drifts of yesterday,
Thus our thoughts on the sea-scooped dunes
When autumn cloudlets fleck the sky.

Oh, autumn-sea under a cloud-flecked sky
As caressed are thy dunes with opal spray
So shimmer in dreams on the breeze-blown strand
Sweet long-lost summers of yesterday.