I lay in the quiet sunshine
Of the summer's golden heat;
In my heart was the music of Schiller,
And the dreams that this youth makes sweet:
Dreams that from their high dwelling
Come down in the early years,
To live in our first fond worship
Which we give with our sweetest tears.
Lo! at every throb of the sunshine,
As if by some magic wand,
Rose up in their beauty within me
The dreams of the fable land;
And each dream had a voice, and whisper'd
With tender, confiding breath,
All the early feeling and worship
And the joy of a simple faith.
Then my heart took a passionate longing
To re-live that happy time,
When around my life the ideal
Was thrown with melodious chime:
When I worshipp'd in lonely gladness
The forms that came down to me,
And flitted before my fancy,
And babbled from stream and tree.
Ah! short was that boyhood worship;
For the voice of the toiling day
Woke me up to the labour of manhood,
And frighten'd my dreams away.
But still in the poet's music
Lives the flush of that happy time,
And still from my heart at moments
Peals an answer to its chime.
For I lived that life in silence,
As if speech had been a wrong,
But feeling within me the beauty
That Schiller has put in song.
And strangely the poet stirr'd me
With the magic of his line,
For I felt that his early lifetime
Had been something akin to mine.
And I knew that those visions and fancies
Were but part of the ecstacy
Lying hid in the past, and waking
At the poet's melody.