Spencer Heath Archive

Item 353

Penned by Heath on the fly-leaves of Stories from Wagner by J. Walker McSpadden. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., 1905.

September 21, 1909

To my daughter, Marguerite, at the beginning of her tenth year is inscribed this

Book of tales of olden days

When the world was as a child and wrought

In gruesome myth the human dream stuff,

Childish race-visions bodying forth

In symbols crude and naive

Conquests of later days, achievements of maturer age.

 

Who shall say these dreams are false?

Can any dream but picture forth

What’s truly in the dreamer?

 

So, in these race-dreams, rightly understood, we find

The mental nebulae /?/ of what the world must do —

The huge achievement none but the pure and brave can make —

The gnomes of mean endeavor, dark design and plot —

Dragons of power entrenched — the hero’s weird enchantments

The transient good diverting from the ultimate —

But magic arms, withal, to meet each sternest need,

And over all a kindly destiny that leads

Love to its own, the hero to his goal.

 

The tales may not be true, yet we can know that truth is in them

As in the high dreams of youth ’tis also found

Though we must trust its last fulfillment

To the benign enchantments of the gods and faeries.

Spencer Heath Bridgeport, Conn., 1909