HENRY KENDALL
(EXCERPT)
The song that once I dreamed about, the tender, touching thing,
As radiant as the rose without the love of wind and wing—
The perfect verses to the tune of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon, remain unwritten yet.
It is too late to write them now; the ancient fire is cold;
No ardent lights illume the brow as in the days of old.
I cannot dream the dream again; but, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain, I think I hear its words.
I think I hear the echo still of long-forgotten tones,
When evening winds are on the hill and sunset fires the cones.
But only in the hours supreme with songs of land and sea,
The lyrics of the leaf and stream, this echo comes to me.
There is a river in the range I love to think about:
Perhaps the searching feet of change have never found it out.
Ah! Oftentimes I used to look upon its banks and long
To steal the beauty of that brook and put it in a song.
* * *
Ah! Let me hope that in that place the old familiar things,
To which I turn a wistful face, have never taken wings.
Let me retain the fancy still that, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill, one spot secure from change!
No longer doth the earth reveal her gracious green and gold:
I sit where youth was once and feel that I am growing old.
The lustre from the face of things is wearing all away:
Like one who halts with tired wings, I rest and muse today.
* * *
But in the night, and when the rain the troubled torrent fills,
I often think I see again the river in the hills.
And when the day is very near, and birds are on the wing,
My spirit fancies it can hear the song I cannot sing.