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.
NEW HORIZONS
Never was there path our childhood used to roam
So long it led not in the evening home;
Nor could the magic of the unknown track
Prevail against the hearth that called us back.
Over the same hill-tops, wild-rose or grey,
Our evening and our twilight always lay;
And when the night fell all the unknown stars
Grew homely shining through our window bars.
Now we have fared to the country o’er the hill,
And unknown journeys lie beyond us still;—
Ways unadventured, countless paths to roam,
But none that leads us in the evening home.
Onward, not homeward, some adventure calls
With every dawn, and every evening falls
Over new horizons, wild-rose or grey,
And old stars shining on the unknown way