The child is not the dreamer; but the youth.
No dream can lend enchantment to the truth
In childhood, and no glamour from afar
Can make its paths more wondrous than they are.
Nor was there any need for us to dream
When every field and flower and hill and stream
Fulfilled the heart’s desire, and hope could feign
No love or joy our world did not contain.
The dreamer is the youth who finds the ends
Of paths that once were endless, who ascends
The peaks that once in heaven seemed to glow,
Only to see the glory spread below;
For whom the rose of eve, the morning’s gold,
The starlight shining over field and fold,
The voice of wind and wave, the wild flowers’ scent,
Waken a want where once they brought content.
He dreams: the vanished wonder that those days
Of childhood showed him on familiar ways
He cherishes,--he dreams that they exist
On pathways still afar or somewhere missed.
Where knowledge from his world the beauty stole,
The inborn light of beauty in his soul
Relumes it, and endows a world unseen
With all the splendour of the might-have-been.
Pleasures beguile him, and that light within
Lends its own beauty to the face of sin,
Or flares to fire of passion that consumes
The very loveliness its light illumes.
He dreams of love, and every pathway’s bend
Holds him expectant, every journey’s end
Gives promise of the tryst, the hour supreme
That shall reveal the maiden of his dream.
His faith is in himself: he would reform
The world with love, and take his Heaven by storm.
The great adventure calls him: he would build
On earth his visions, and his heart is thrilled
Those labours to complete which God left unfulfilled.