An Old Picture

THERE are times when a dream deliciousSteals into a musing hour,Like a face with love capriciousThat peeps from a woodland bower;And one dear scene comes changeless;A wooded hill and a river;A deep, cool bend, where the lilies end.And the elm-tree shadows quiver.

And I lie on the brink there, dreamingThat the life I live is a dream;That the real is but the seeming.And the true is the sun-flecked stream.Beneath me, the perch and the bream sail pastIn the dim cool depths of the river;The struggling fly breaks the mirrored skyAnd the elm-tree shadows quiver.

There are voices of children away on the hill;There are bees thro' the flag-flowers humming;The lighter-man calls to the lock, and the millOn the farther side is drumming.And I sink to sleep in my dream of a dream,In the grass by the brink of a river.Where the voices blend and the lilies endAnd the elm-tree shadows quiver.'

Like a gift from the past is the kindly dream.For the sorrow and passion and painAre adrift like the leaves on the breast of the stream,And the child-life comes again.O, the sweet sweet pain of a joy that died—Of a pain that is joy forever!O, the life that died in the stormy tideThat was once my sun-flecked river.