With moon-white hearts that held a gleam
I gathered wild flowers in a dream,
And shaped a woman, whose sweet blood
Was odour of the wildwood bud.
From dew, the starlight arrowed through,
I wrought a woman’s eyes of blue;
The lids, that on her eyeballs lay,
Were rose-pale petals of the May.
I took the music of the breeze,
And water whispering in the trees,
And shaped the soul that breathed below
A woman’s blossom breasts of snow.
Out of a rose-bud’s veins I drew
The fragrant crimsom beating through
The languid lips of her, whose kiss
Was as a poppy’s drowsiness.
Out of the moonlight and the air
I wrought the glory of her hair,
That o’er her eyes’ blue heaven lay
Like some gold cloud o’er dawn of day.
A shadow’s shadow in the glass
Of sleep, my spirit saw her pass;
And, thinking of it now, meseems
We only live within our dreams.
For in that time she was to me
More real than our reality;
More real than Earth, more real than I—
The unreal things that pass and die.
Love Poems by Madison Cawein
Meaning of the Poem ‘A Dream Shape’ by Madison Cawein
In A Dream Shape, Madison Cawein crafts a vision of an ideal woman formed entirely from elements of the natural world and the dream realm. The speaker conjures her from moonlight, dew, flowers, breeze, and birdsong, each line layering ephemeral beauty into a figure both sensual and spectral. This dream-woman is not just an image of feminine allure, but a symbol of how imagination and longing shape emotional realities that feel more vivid than waking life.
The poem’s final stanzas reveal its philosophical core: that dreams may hold a deeper truth than physical existence. The woman is described as “more real than our reality,” suggesting that the heart’s visions, shaped by desire and memory, transcend what is tangible. Cawein blurs the boundary between dream and reality, evoking the haunting notion that what we dream might define us more than what we live.
