BY S. D. ANDERSON. What is this dream that o’er me now Comes with its bright and sunny spell, As starlight falls on childhood’s brow? Haply this lock of hair can tell. Ah me! how thoughts of early years Are linked with this dear gift of thine— The doubts, the memories, and the tears That cluster round this bygone shrine. The air seems filled with boyhood’s flowers, The perfume of the summer fields; The dreams and gladness of the hours That freshness to our pathway yields. Times when the heart was glad and young, A thousand scenes of love and truth, That, rose-like, from our track have sprung, Amid the dreamy times of youth. Hours when each gushing fount of life Leaped high amid this desert wild, Come angel-like to calm the strife, As once they did when Eden smiled. Not often on life’s beaten track Come such rich summer times, To bring the heart’s pure sunshine back, Like old remembered rhymes. But now I see, deep in a wood, Two lovers ’neath the trees so hoary; She, blushing to the solitude Beneath his simple touching story; Her sweet face coyly turned away, To hide the thoughts that on her cheek Are mantling like the wakened day Upon the mountain’s highest peak. And he, perhaps some poet who Had filled the world with golden dreams, Hopes, that around his path upgrew, As wild flowers deck the singing streams. And thus, as hand in hand they go, He tells her much we may not hear— How his heart swelled to overflow Under a sky so dark and drear— How on the soul came _Care_ and _Pain_, Twin-sisters of the soulless _Real_, The race and haggle for the gain That those who win the world must feel. The striving to become a part Of that great sea whose tideings ever Bears on its waves each manly heart, That, struggling, droops its pinions never. And now there is a bridal throng Slow winding through the moss-grown aisle; The ring, the vow, the nuptial song— From age a tear, from youth a smile. A cot with jessamine-covered door, A streamlet singing all the day, And on the dew-bespangled floor A thousand golden sunbeams play.