What do you dream, O Stream, as you sleep so long?
Hint of the black morass where your mother stays?
Kiss of the meadow grass in your early ways?
Where the cows came down to drink and the even song
Of a thousand birds rang out in the dusk of the days?
Tell me your dream, O Stream, as you sleep so still.
Leaves that are stirred at dawn and flowers that bend,
Looking, like love for a word in the eyes of a friend,
Seeing themselves as love in love's eyes will,
Giving a dream for a dream 'till the world shall end?
What do you dream, O Stream, in your long, still sleep?
Is it of oceans wide, to you unknown,
Blank in their waste of pride and depth unshown,
Where myriad streams lie in Nirvana deep?
O contemplating Buddhist, wrapt and lone!
Tell me your dream, O Stream--would you forget
Life that was near and sweet, gold, green and blue?
Press of the little feet that came to you?
The thirsting comforted, the parched thing wet,
For the wide, cold waste of the sea you never knew?
Dream, Stream, dream, for your way is long,
And the end of streams is the wide, wide waste of the sea.
At the end of dreams the waves wait hungrily.
Hush of the little feet and the even song,
The breathing world and springs that are to be!
