Dreams

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!

A Song of the Way

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.

In Trinity Church-Yard at Sunset

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!

Where Cross-Roads Part

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?

Or was't the stripling Youth, whose roundelay
Awoke the echoes of the throbbing day
And changed to gladness all the world's dull mien,
Glad roads of Spring?

Apart I stand, distraught with lone dismay,
No more Youth's gladsome biddings to obey,
No more with him Love's strewings lost to glean;
The hills of years now ever intervene,
And bid me say good-bye to you for aye,
Glad roads of S