A Day Dream On The Rail

I stood upon the four-foot way
Amid the haunts I knew so well,
The sunshine of an April day
Was over all with tender spell.

The primrose and the violet,
That little fairy of the grass,
On sloping hill and bank were set
To show which way the spring did pass.

Across the river, from a tree
Whose top was in the balmy air,
A mavis sang—he sang to me—
And field and wood grew still more fair.

I stood like one who dreams, nor cares
To mingle with the life around,
But lives within the realms he shares,
And will not overstep their bound.

For all my inner life was stirred,
As in the golden time of thought,
Till, as I live, again I heard
The cuckoo sing his double note.

It came behind me from the hill,
The voice and spirit of the spring;
And I, to keep the magic still,
I did not turn to hear him sing.

Why shatter all the simple creed
Of boyhood? for I held it then
That he—this bird—came at their need,
And brought the gift of spring to men.

That he was mateless, only he—
A single voice, a double call
That sent a thrill of prophecy,
With coming summer through it all,

That were he seen by mortal eye
The charm would fail, and there would pass
A brighter glory from the sky,
A greener colour from the grass.

An idle thought perchance to think,
And yet the pity of it seems
The man should rise and snap the link
And strike the boy from out his dreams.

The loss is his; for, looking back
Through all the years he left behind,
A sunshine settles on the track
His footsteps never more will find.

And all along the four-foot way,
That sunny day in perfect spring,
The past was with me like the day,
And lent my thoughts their swiftest wing.

And I looked back, and, looking, felt
This manhood, with its rougher strife,
Pass, as the summer mists, and melt
In that clear light of earlier life.

And I once more upon the line
Stood as a toiler; heard the crash
Of engines; saw their muscles shine
Like sunshine through the steam and flash;

Knew the red secret of the birth
Of those huge things that pant and beat,
Who toil for men, and span the earth,
And shriek for spaces for their feet.

They gave me songs to sing: I sang
Their splendours as they flashed along;
The roar of wheels on rails that rang
And shot their echoes through my song;

The white smoke-serpents, coil on coil,
That shot up at each monster's will—
And I was happy then, for toil
Was sweet, but song was sweeter still.

I heard it through the eager day
In whispers, but when all the night
Fell, and the stars were on their way,
It broke into a keen delight.

And then I sang: my songs may be
Of simple note and feeble wing;
The bird that sits upon the tree—
He pipes though no one hears him sing.

And yet it were a pleasant thought
When death has flung his mists between,
To think that in these fields should float
A little touch of what has been.

A memory for friends to keep
Till, as the quick, sad years go by,
They, too, pass onward to their sleep,
And dying with them as they die.