The Dreamers And Other Poems — Themes and Context

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In Category - Adventure Picaresque Fiction

Authors: Garrison, Theodosia Pickering, 1874-1944 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2007 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Poetry Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 12,002

Reading time 53 min

Text sections 6

This digital edition of The Dreamers And Other Poems — Themes and Context is described by source-level measurements including 12,002 words, 53 min estimated reading time, and 6 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 25.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Poetry,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #20373

Garrison's poems contrast domestic stability with gypsy freedom, using recurring images of wheels, gardens, and thresholds to explore longing, love, and loss across tightly structured lyric forms.

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File: pg20373

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This was the House of Dreams I made Long, long before I saw his face.

I jested over-much in days of old, I looked on sorrow once and did not care, Now Love hath crowned my head with very gold, I will be worthy of the joy I wear.

There is not one a-hungered or a-cold Shall seek my door but that he too shall share Something of this vast happiness I hold; I will be worthy of the joy I wear.

For I was hungered and Love spread the feast, Cold--and He touched my heart and warmed it there, Yea, crowned me Queen--I neediest of His least, I will be worthy of the joy I wear.

For mocking on men's faces He only sees instead The hidden, hundred traces Of tears their eyes have shed.

Above their lips denying, Through all their boasting dares, He hears the anguished crying Of old unanswered prayers.

And through the will's reliance He only sees aright A frightened child's defiance Left lonely in the night.

The Angel of the night when night was gone High upon Heaven's ramparts, cried, "The Dawn!"

And wheeling worlds grew radiant with the one And undiminished glory of the sun.

And Angel, Seraph, Saint and Cherubim Raised to the morning their exultant hymn.

All Heaven thrilled anew to look upon The great recurring miracle of dawn.

And in the little worlds beneath them--men Rose, yawned and ate and turned to toil again.

It was not then her heart broke-- That moment when she knew That all her faith held holiest Was utterly untrue.

It was not then her heart broke-- That night of prayer and tears When first she dared the thought of life Through all the empty years.

But when beneath the April boughs She felt the blossoms stir, The careless mirth of yesterday Came near and smiled at her.

Old singing lingered in the wind, Old joy came close again, Oh, underneath the April boughs, I think her heart broke then.

They are ashamed who leave so soon The Inn of Grief--who thought to stay Through many a faithful sun and moon, Yet tarry but a day.

Shame-faced I watch them pay the score, Then straight with eager footsteps press Where waits beyond its rose-wreathed door The Inn of Happiness.

I wish I did not know that here, Here too--where they have dreamed to stay So many and many a golden year They lodge but for a day.

So quietly I seem to sit apart; I think she does not know or guess at all, How dear this certain hour to my old heart, When in our quiet street the shadows fall.

She leans and listens at the little gate. I sit so still, not any eye might see How watchfully before her there I wait For that one step that brings my world to me.

She does not know that long before they meet (So eagerly must go a love athirst), My heart outstrips the flying of her feet, And meets and greets him first--and greets him first.

High above his happy head Little leaves of Spring were spread; And adown the dewy lawn Soft as moss the young green grass Wooed his footsteps, and the dawn Paused to watch him pass. Even so he seemed in truth Dancing between Love and Youth; And his song as gay a thing Still before him seemed to go Light as any bird awing, Blithe as jonquils in the Spring, And we laughed and said, "Pierrot, 'Tis Pierrot."

"Oh," he sang, "Her hands are far Sweeter than white roses are; When I hold them to my lips, Ere I dare a finer bliss, Petal-like her finger-tips Tremble 'neath my kiss. And the mocking of her eyes Lures me like blue butterflies Falling--lifting--of their grace, And her mouth--her mouth is wine." And we laughed as though her face Suddenly illumed the place, And we said, "'Tis Columbine, Columbine."

He made him a love o' dreams-- He raised for his heart's delight-- (As the heart of June a crescent moon) A frail, fair spirit of light.

He gave her the gift of joy-- The gift of the dancing feet-- He made her a thing of very Spring-- Virginal--wild and sweet.

But when he would draw her near To his eager heart's content, As a sunbeam slips from the finger-tips She slipped from his hold and went.

Virginal--wild--and sweet-- So she eludes him still-- The love that he made of dawn and shade Of dominant want and will.

For ever the dream of man Is more than the dreamer is; Though he form it whole of his inmost soul, Yet never 'tis wholly his.

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In The Dreamers and Other Poems, Theodosia Garrison repeatedly sets her speakers at thresholds—a gate, a garden wall, a window—where the pull of an open road meets the weight of a settled room. The volume's title poem introduces this tension directly: a woman at her spinning wheel watches gypsies pass, her tidy space suddenly feeling like a prison. Yet the gypsies themselves harbor a wistful dream of a home like hers. This mutual longing, never resolved, becomes the book's central structural device.

Garrison's poems move through tightly rhymed stanzas, often built on refrains or incremental repetition. The garden, the spinning wheel, the wedding gown, and the rose recur as charged objects that anchor emotional states. The collection is organized into titled sections, with the first and longest sharing the book's name, followed by shorter sequences such as "Songs of Himself" and "The Gypsying."

Recurring Objects and Their Weight

Garrison builds her poems around a small set of domestic and natural objects that accumulate meaning through repetition. The spinning wheel appears in "The Dreamers" as a symbol of industry that becomes a chain; in "Three Songs in a Garden" it reappears as a marker of interrupted labor—"if he finds me spinning / 'Tis short I'll break my thread." The wedding gown in the poem of that name is stored away with lavender and cedar, treated like a sleeping beloved. The rose, whether white, red, or wise, functions as confidante, boundary, and memory. These objects are never merely decorative; they carry the emotional logic of each lyric.

Garrison often places them in opposition to open spaces—the road, the wind, the gypsy camp. The tension between containment and release drives many poems, with the object standing for what is held or lost.

Movement Between Interior and Exterior

Several poems chart a movement from inside to outside, or vice versa, as a shift in emotional register. In "The Dreamers," the speaker's tidy room becomes a prison only when the gypsies pass. In "The Awakening," the speaker moves from a "fearsome night" to a dawn she will kneel to welcome. The garden in "Three Songs in a Garden" is a liminal space—neither fully private nor public—where secrets are whispered to roses and lovers may appear. "The Gypsying" imagines a journey outward on a blue October morning, but the conditional tense—"I wish we might go"—keeps the speaker rooted in longing rather than action. This pattern of imagined departure versus actual stasis recurs throughout the collection, giving the poems a shared emotional geography.

The Speaker's Voice and Addressee

Garrison frequently writes in a first-person voice that addresses a specific other: a lover, a lost friend, a figure like Pierrette or Sheila. The tone is intimate but restrained, often elegiac. In "Good-bye, Pierrette," the speaker stands hand in hand with a companion under a new moon, yet the poem is a farewell. In "Distance," the speaker measures separation not in miles but in a single step taken at a moment of need. The addressee is sometimes named, sometimes implied, but the poems rarely feel like soliloquies—they are spoken to someone who may or may not hear. This creates a quiet drama of unreturned or interrupted communication, as in "The Disciples," where Love is invited to a feast but the outcome is left ambiguous.

Structure and Repetition as Formal Strategy

Garrison favors short lines, regular rhyme schemes, and refrains that build incantatory momentum. "The Gypsying" repeats its opening line as a refrain across three stanzas, each time with a slight variation in the closing phrase: "one day the while we're young," "one day before we're old," "the while we care." This incremental repetition mirrors the speaker's shifting temporal focus. In "Three Songs in a Garden," each song has its own refrain and image set—rose leaves, lilies, a lover—while the garden itself remains the constant setting. The effect is one of variation within constraint, a formal echo of the book's thematic tension between freedom and domestic order. The poems do not build narrative arcs; they circle their subjects, returning to key images with altered emphasis.

Readers approaching The Dreamers and Other Poems will find a collection best taken in sequence, as the recurring motifs and tonal shifts accumulate across the sections. Pay attention to the objects—the wheel, the rose, the wedding gown—and to whom the speaker is speaking. The poems reward rereading: a line that seems simple on first encounter often gains weight from its echo elsewhere in the volume.

I kept thinking about how Garrison’s gardens and wheels hold both comfort and the ache to leave. Then I picked up The Nuts of Knowledge: Lyrical Poems Old and New — Themes and Context and felt that same quiet longing, the way thresholds linger between what we keep and what we release. It stayed with me after closing.