Yesterday - Nora May French

Now all my thoughts were crisped and thinned
    To elfin threads, to gleaming browns.
Like tawny grasses lean with wind
    They drew your heart across the downs.
Your will of all the winds that blew
    They drew across the world to me
To thread my whimsey thoughts of you
    Along the downs, above the sea.

Beneath a pool beyond the dune—
    So green it was and amber-walled
A face would glimmer like a moon
    Seen whitely through an emerald—
And there my mermain fancy lay
    And dreamed the light and pull were one,
And flickered in her seaweed's sway
    A broken largesse of the sun.

Above the world as evening fell
    I made my heart into a sky,
And through a twilight like a shell
    I saw the shining seagulls fly.
I found beneath the sea and land
    And lost again, unwrit, unheard,
A song that fluttered in my hand
    And vanished like a silver bird.

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Nora May French (1881 – 1907) USA
Source: Nora May French