Youth

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.