Thank God for the sun and the wind, the rain and the dew!
They beat on the doors of the heart, and they enter it, too;
They sweep out the dust that has gathered with the laboring years,
And the chaff of ambition and pride that blossoms in tears.

They cry to the Child long asleep in the cells of the brain:
" Awake to the music and magic in the woodlands again;
The fields are as green and as gay as the day of your birth,
And the kisses of winter and summer still cover the earth.

" The skies are as blue, the rivers as light on their feet;
The woods are as deep and as black and as balsamy sweet;
The hill-tops as high and as clean and as fresh with the wind
As the day that you entered your prison and shut them behind. "

For the Child that was with us in youth is with us in age;
(How often you glimpse his white face at the bars of his cage!)
You have only to strike off the chains, and once he is free
He'll return to the lips of the clover and the breasts of the sea.

For only the sinews grow old and the dreams turn to dust;
Only the tools of ambition grow blunted with rust.
The toiler within? Oh, you have only to lower the bars
To see that his youth is the Youth of the hills and the stars!
Thank God for the sun and the wind, the rocks and the trees;
The plains and the woods and the skies, the rivers and seas;
That open the doors of the heart to the spirit of Truth,
Till our feet are aflame once again on the hill-tops of Youth!