Lake Lyrics and Other Poems

by William Wilfred Campbell

 

ODE TO A MEADOW BROOK

 
Dream on, dream on, enamoured of thy lot,
    Thou child of summer ’mid thy fields and trees,
Where haply in some low, wind-cradled spot,
    Red, sunbeam-kissed, and garnered sweet of bees,
Bright clovers nod, loved by each languid breeze.
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    Dream on, dream on, by gables, nooks and farms,
Where gladness smiles and beauty never flees,
    Outside of all that hates and all that harms,
    Unmindful of our life and its vague weak alarms.

Dream on, dream on, ’neath gentle skies low furled,
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    By soft tongued airs and honied blossoms blest,
Across the bosom of the under world,
    Where sunbeams kiss through its green throbbing vest.
Thou art a part of nature, on her breast,
    A prattling infant thou wilt ever lie,
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Drawing all music from her mighty rest,
    Sweet melodies though old yet never die,
    But mingle their glad dream with wood and field and sky.

Dream on, dream on, and tell all time thy love;
    Of earth and all her misty, leafy dress,
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Of sun and moon and stars, blue heaven above,
    Too tranced in love’s sweet self-forgetfulness,
To dream how much thine own glad life doth bless
    All things in meadow, marsh and leafy wold.
Nor maketh thus its own glad music less,
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    (Like human love that waneth wan and cold)
    But folds and clasps all else in its sweet shining fold.