Dear Lady of Poppies, take my hand,
And lead me down to the Opal Sea,
Where lolls a boat on the languid tide,
The lifting, lilting, loitering tide,
Waiting for thee and me.
Dear Lady of Poppies, loose the sail,
Our course to the purple West is set,
And we are off to the beautiful isle,
The dreamy, mystical, marvelous isle,
Where the sorrowful go to forget.
Dear Lady of Poppies, the wind is fair,
The beryl water is cool and deep,
And this boat that silverly rises and falls,
That rocks and trembles and lifts and falls,
Surely its name is Sleep!
And far away, thro’ the purple mist,
The pearly shore of an island gleams,
Of an island kissed by the lips of the sea,
By the cool, soft, pleading lips of the sea,
The mystical island of Dreams.
“The Lady of Poppies” as it appears in Higginson’s The Voice of April-Land and Other Poems (1903).