This valley now in sun, and now in shade, Is like the musings of your tender mind, That pauses, bathed in joy, yet half afraid To look before, and then to gaze behind.
Along the fragrant meadows slowly steal, The pensive, drifting shadows, purple blue, As o'er your heart, that shrinks the while to feel The kiss of promise wonderful and new.
Look upward, Child, to where across the skies Float happy clouds, aglow with morning light! It is _their_ shadow that before you lies Upon the plain, and see, the clouds are white!
Beneath the lime trees in the garden High above the town, The scent of whose suspended bloom Entranced the air with warm perfume I stood, and watched the river flowing, Flowing smooth and brown.
The heat of all the summer sunshine Centred in the skies, Beneath its spell the city's towers Grew dreamy, and the climbing flowers Upon the balconies hung limply Down, with closing eyes.
Some drowsy pigeons cooed together On the nearer eaves, Gnats danced, and one big foolish bee Grown honey-drunk, bumped into me, And ere he buzzed a lazy protest Fell amid the leaves.
A bell began to chime, I watched it Swinging to and fro, It made a solemn, pious sound, While flippant swallows, darting round To peer within the ancient belfrey Soared now high, now low.
Time passed, and still I stayed to ponder Through the afternoon, Within my brain the golden haze Wrought magic musings, and my gaze Bent inward could behold no image Save the form of June.
The world has grown unreal to-day Far out upon the Zuyder Zee! We drift towards a mystic isle, With scarce a breath of wind the while. I hear the murmur of the tide, I hear you breathing at my side, Far out upon the Zuyder Zee.
The drearness of this inland sea! Doomed thus to lie eternally A fettered slave, grown old between The dykes and marshes low and green, Devoid of wind to stir the deep Forgotten heart, so long asleep, Oh! sorrow-ladened Zuyder Zee!
This awful hush engulfing things! The noon-tide hangs with outspread wings Above the ship, all motionless. The penitential sails confess Their sad inertness, damp and brown, From silent masts they ripple down Towards the lifeless Zuyder Zee.
I almost think that you and I Are floating on a haze of sky, This is an unknown sphere of dreams, Or else some region where the beams Of daylight that have died unblessed By some kind thought stray seeking rest, Along the wastes of Zuyder Zee.