Daybreak Returns

From the grasslands, from the marshes, from the margins of the moor

Rise up misty ghostly creatures in the pearly light of dawn,

Some mementos, revenants or sylph-like spirits past and gone

To the brink of ancient memory and up to its creaking door,

People whom we, fond, remember or with some frisson of heart,

Those who populate our past, storied as fabled gods and kings,

Filled with magic and wild treasure and a million pretty things

That we wish we might have honored as such value from the start—

So at daybreak they come whispering, returning, silver-grey

Without tarnish in their sterling, as they rise up in our sight

And return to us those memories had fallen into night,

Bringing back that love and loveliness of theirs to present day