There are times when a dream delicious 
Steals into a musing hour, 
Like a face with love capricious 
That 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, dreaming 
That 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 past 
In the dim cool depths of the river; 
The struggling fly breaks the mirrored sky 
And 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 mill 
On 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 end 
And the elm-tree shadows quiver. 

Like a gift from the past is the kindly dream, 
For the sorrow and passion and pain 
Are 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 tide 
That was once my sun-flecked river. 

A cobbler lives in Sari Gueul
Who has a wise mind, people say.
He sits in his door on a three-legged stool,
Hammering leather all the day.
He laughs with the boys who make such noise
And loves to watch how the children play.
Gladly I'd shuffle my lot in a pool
With that of the cobbler in Sari Gueul.

Sorrow to him is a ball of wax
That melts in the sun of a cheerful smile
And all his needs are, a box of tacks,
Thread and leather, old boots in a pile.
I would give my art for half of his heart.
Who wants the world with all its guile?
And which of us two is the greater fool,
Me, or the cobbler of Sari Gueul?

At evening an old cow climbs the street,
So lean and bony you'd wonder how.
He hears the old cracked bell from his seat
And the wrinkles move on his yellow brow,
And he says as he strikes, 'To me or my likes
You are coming faster, old brown cow.
Slow steps come fast to the knife and rule.'
Says the wise old cobbler of Sari Gueul.

Often I hear him in my sleep,
Hammering still in the little town.
And I see the queer old shops on the steep,
And the queerer folk move up and down.
And the cobbler's sign creaks up in a vine,
When the wind slips over the housetops brown.
Waking, I pray to the Gods who rule
For the queer old cobbler of Sari Gueul.