Shall I turn you a dream for your loneliness?
A dream of the star-scattered faces about you,
And the plans and pleasures and pains that flout you?
Shall I tell of the voices that you must hear
Before some one Voice calls you clear?
(But whatever it be—for joy and sadness
Or triumph, defeat, or grief or gladness—
That I cannot know,
Said the Old Mill very low.)
YOUTH
Nay, Old Mill, if you know the voices
That make for a bold life’s chance and choices,
Turn me that dream!
OLD MILL
Only the sound of one voice, you shall hear,
A Voice that has known your soul forever;
A Voice that has called you and kept you wherever
You failed or won in your high endeavor—
The Voice of your Dream!
YOUTH
O Mill, give me no mystery;
I know the way of human history—
Turn me true dreams!
OLD MILL
Only the dream of Beauty, I know,
The long sky paved with the afterglow;
The moonlaced bog and the shimmering seas,
The floating mist through moorland trees;
The quiet color of twilight dunes,
The night heron croaking its ebb-tide runes;
The black-walled sky and the star-strung vines,
The pooling spread of the Island pines.
And the Sea’s voice borne on the salt mist breath,
Where the chained arbutus wandereth....
The strange glad swerve of the moorland road
And the great black shoulder of the wood....
(Only these things I know,
Said the Old Mill very low.)
YOUTH