Summer Dreams

When the Summer sun is shining,
    And the green things push and grow,
Oft my heart runs over measure,
With its flowing fount of pleasure,
    As I feel the sea winds blow;
    Ah, then life is good, I know.

And I think of sweet birds building,
    And of children fair and free;
And of glowing sun-kissed meadows,
And of tender twilight shadows,
    And of boats upon the sea.
    Oh, then life seems good to me!

Then unbidden and unwanted,
    Come the darker, sadder sights;
City shop and stifling alley,
Where misfortune's children rally;
    And the hot crime-breeding nights,
    And the dearth of God's delights.

And I think of narrow prisons
    Where unhappy songbirds dwell,
And of cruel pens and cages
Where some captured wild thing rages
    Like a madman in his cell,
    In the Zoo, the wild beasts' hell.

And I long to lift the burden
    Of man's selfishness and sin;
And to open wide earth's treasures
Of God's storehouse, full of pleasures,
    For my dumb and human kin,
    And to ask the whole world in.