Some scattered in seven years' traces,
⁠As they fell from the boy that was then;
Long left among idle green places,
⁠Or gathered but now among men;
On seas full of wonder and peril,
⁠Blown white round the capes of the north;
Or in islands where myrtles are sterile
⁠And loves bring not forth.

O daughters of dreams and of stories
⁠That life is not wearied of yet,
Faustine, Fragoletta, Dolores,
⁠Félise and Yolande and Juliette,
Shall I find you not still, shall I miss you,
⁠When sleep, that is true or that seems,
Comes back to me hopeless to kiss you,
⁠O daughters of dreams?

They are past as a slumber that passes,
⁠As the dew of a dawn of old time;
More frail than the shadows on glasses,
⁠More fleet than a wave or a rhyme.
As the waves after ebb drawing seaward,
⁠When their hollows are full of the night,
So the birds that flew singing to me-ward
⁠Recede out of sight.

The songs of dead seasons, that wander
⁠On wings of articulate words;