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.