Disillusion by Kathleen Dalziel

I built myself a splendid dwelling-place,
   An airy castle proud;
Its lights the stars the green eaves interlace,
   Its bastions of cloud.

I wove myself a wondrous cloak of dreams
   All Jacaranda-blue
And crimson of the waratah, and gleams
   Of moon-fire threaded through.

I made me dear companions of the winds
   That smudge the placid pool;
The creamy flowering woodbine that entwines
   The rose-hung arbours cool.

The unnamed blossoms growing starry-eyed
   In ferny bushland aisles;
The storm-wind, shouting in untrammelled pride
   Down the long forest miles.

You lost the keys of mine own castled steep,
   Trampled my dreams, and made a mock of them;
The magic cloak I always thought to keep
   You tore from hem to hem.

I seek for comfort where the red leaves burn
   In old, familiar ways of flower and tree;
My old companions know me not, and turn
   Their faces far from me.

Shivering and homeless, my soul seeks in grief
   For shelter while the storms of life go by;
If this be done in days of the green leaf.
   What of the sere and dry?

First published in The Brisbane Courier, 22 September 1928

Author reference site: Austlit

See also.