Poetry Archives

A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

Paul Laurence Dunbar

Pray, what can dreams avail
  To make love or to mar?
The child within the cradle rail
  Lies dreaming of the star.
But is the star by this beguiled
To leave its place and seek the child?

The poor plucked rose within its glass
  Still dreameth of the bee;
But, tho’ the lagging moments pass,
  Her Love she may not see.
If dream of child and flower fail,
Why should a maiden’s dreams prevail?

Online text © 1998-2009 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar | Dodd, Mead And Company, 1922

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