An Old Picture

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.