Classic Poem

I left my study, dropped my books,
And, turning from the town,
Bethought me of the quiet nooks
Deep hid in forests brown.

I came to where the old pines stood,
And needle carpets spread:
The sun's gold trickled through the wood,
The winds soughed overhead.

I laid me down in restful peace,
And watched the swaying boughs,
While thought, rejoiced at her release,
Went wandering in drowse.

And as, half-dreaming in my place,
Beneath the trees I lay,
The flecks of sunshine on my face,
The tired world far away,

My thinking seemed to melt and flow
As grapes melt into wines,
Into a song-stream sweet and low,—
The winds among the pines.

They sung—my thoughts—the story o'er
Of how, since time began,
Life started on the ocean floor
And climbed up into man.

And then more strange the chanting grew;
It swelled so glad and free
While rose the coming years to view
And all the fair to-be.

I listened till my heart beat high
To haste the laggard years!
And, when I roused me with a sigh,
My lids were wet with tears.

I kept but snatches of my dream,—
Oh, would the whole might stay!
It dwindled like a mountain stream
The Summer dries away.

But, as I mused the vision o'er,
A peace was in my breast,
As when Night folds her starry door
And soothes the flowers to rest.

For still my glimmering dream-glow makes
My hope's high hill-tops bright,
Like the faint streak the morning wakes,
When wanes the summer night.

For man's deep midnight now is past;
And, though the shadows lie
Still in the valleys, now at last
Dawn's in the eastern sky.