But there are flowers more dear to me That time can never set apart-- The fragrant blooms of memory That grow within the heart.
Of all the ages' gain, the ages' loss, A wealth of wonders and so much away-- When now hears one the woodland elves at play, Or angry dryads where tall tree-tops toss. No more they lightly tread the dewy moss As danced they through cool haunts in ecstasy; But rank and lost the paths in lone decay Where fairy footsteps once were wont to cross.
O, happy Greeks, who knew the gods so well, To you I burn my sacrificial fire! Again reveal the mystic hidden rune Whereby to find the slopes of asphodel-- Ah, then to hear Apollo charm his lyre And see Diana 'neath the sickle moon.
We once built a house o' dreams At the break o' day Made from out the first gold beams On the sward astray.
Little did we think or care 'Twas not safe nor strong; We were very happy there And the day was long.
Now we leave our house o' dreams, Why, we do not know; Only this--so strange it seems And so hard to go!
Give me the road, the great broad road, That wanders over the hill; Give me a heart without a care And a free, unfettered will-- Ah, thus to journey, thus to fare, With only the skies to frown, And happy I, if the ways but lie Away, away from the town.
Give me the path, the wild-wood path That wanders deep in a dell, Where silence sleeps and sunbeams fain Would waken the slumber spell-- For there the gods find the world again, Immortals of ancient lore, And time is gone, and a mad-glad faun Knows the glades of Greece once more.
How still they sleep within the city moil In their old church-yard with its sighing trees, Where sometimes through the din a twilight breeze Makes one forget the busy streets of toil; But they have little thought of worldly spoil Or the great gain of mortal victories, Their hopes, their dreams, are cold and dead as these Quaint, time-worn gravestones crumbling on the soil.
Yet they once lived and struggled years ago; Their hearts beat madly as these hearts of ours-- And now is all undone in dreamless rest? See, a great city stands against the glow-- Their city, they who here beneath the flowers Have known so long God's gift of peace, most blest!
Glad roads of Spring--O lanes of laughing May As fleeting as the shadow-clouds at play With sunbeams rife upon the grassy green; O golden lanes--through roads that lie between Amid what darkened sweep lost I the way?