There was a dreamy, pine grove once,
whose towering trees looked, to my eye,
Like pictures from a fairy book
beneath a turquoise-vaulted sky!

Some days I'd see an image of
a sleeping princess tangled there.
With lilies fading in her hands
and briar-rose woven in her hair.

Well, years have passed. I walk there now.
'midst lavish trees of greenest plush.
A mossy carpet 'neath my feet.
and all around a velvet hush.

The clanging anvils of the forge
the banks of sombre porphyry.
And din of the metropolis
all seem so far away from me

I've left that pell mell world behind.
and stepped inside a giant church.
While somewhere in the rafters sits.
a cuckoo fluting from its perch.

I see a little spring. I drink.
then walk the woodland sparkly-eyed.
For, like the water from a font,
it leaves my spirit purified.

And now a shaft of light beams down
Each pollen grain and mushroom spore
becomes a tiny mote of gold
transfiguring the forest floor