It led me with its childlike charm, As candor leads desire, Now with a clasp of blossomy arm, A butterfly kiss of fire; Now with a toss of tousled gold, A barefoot sound of green, A breath of musk, of mossy mold, With vague allurements keen. It led me with remembered things Into an old-time vale, Peopled with faery glimmerings, And flower-like fancies pale; Where fungous forms stood, gold and gray, Each in its mushroom gown, And, roofed with red, glimpsed far away, A little toadstool town. It led me with an idle ease, A vagabond look and air, A sense of ragged arms and knees In weeds grown everywhere; It led me, as a gypsy leads, To dingles no one knows, With beauty burred with thorny seeds, And tangled wild with rose. It led me as simplicity Leads age and its demands, With bee-beat of its ecstasy, And berry-stained touch of hands; With round revealments, puff-ball white, Through rents of weedy brown, And petaled movements of delight In roseleaf limb and gown. It led me on and on and on, Beyond the Far Away, Into a world long dead and gone, -- The world of Yesterday: A faery world of memory, Old with its hills and streams, Wherein the child I used to be Still wanders with his dreams. Sometimes. [Thomas S. Jones, Jr.] Across the fields of yesterday He sometimes comes to me, A little lad just back from play -- The lad I used to be. And yet he smiles so wistfully Once he has crept within, I wonder if he hopes to see The man I might have been. Renascence. [Edna St. Vincent Millay] All I could see from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood; I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line Of the horizon, thin and fine, Straight around till I was come Back to where I'd started from; And all I saw from where I stood Was three long mountains and a wood. Over these things I could not see; These were the things that bounded me; And I could touch them with my hand, Almost, I thought, from where I stand. And all at once things seemed so small My breath came short, and scarce at all. But, sure, the sky is big, I said; Miles and miles above my head; So here upon my back I'll lie And look my fill into the sky. And so I looked, and, after all, The sky was not so very tall. The sky, I said, must somewhere stop, And -- sure enough! -- I see the top! The sky, I thought, is not so grand; I 'most could touch it with my hand! And, reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.