Page:Poems of Sentiment and Imagination.djvu/34

30 The shadows of the summer trees

Made columns dark and long

Across the brightly sparkling turf,

And their leaves kept up a song—

A song they'd learned of the dreamy brook

That sung as it flowed along.

Oft have I heard that tune at night,

As it came from the waving wood,

When the breeze was reveling 'mong the boughs,

And stirring the solitude;

And it ever filled my youthful heart

With a wild and yearning mood.

I dreamed that I stood in a spot most like

A place that I had seen,

With its waving wood on a moonlit bank,

And turf of dewy sheen,

And its intertwining canopy,

With the moon and stars between.

The river that glided at my feet,

And trilled its murmured tone,

Had a sound like something I had heard

In the blissful years agone;

And I marveled how I reached that place,

Yet never the change had known.

The long grass waved from the water's edge,

And dipped in the silver tide;

And its shadow laid on the glittering waves

As the lashes of some young bride

Do droop o'er the clear, dark, shining well,

Where her timid feelings hide.

I thought 'twas strange I was standing there,

Alone with the midnight moon.