Childhood Wanderings

In secret haunts where fragrant lilies grew

He walked beneath the sombre hemlock trees

And brushed the scented needles rimmed with dew

Through bogs that spoke of ancient mysteries.

All heaven now was blotted from his view,

He saw an earth ablaze with firelight,

No moon, no stars dared to enter through

The dense forbidding canopy of night.

It seemed a land of secrecy and stealth

Where strange perfumes wandered undefined,

A place of unimaginable wealth

A dreamscape of imaginative mind.

In the child's diverse creative moods and turns

Is there a world impossible to dream?

His spirit sees in primal moss and ferns

A fairy landscape by a gurgling stream

Or his fertile mind catches subtleties

In blooms that have no counterpart on earth,

Like a vision sculpted on a sacred frieze,

A tableau of inestimable worth.

All he imagines is for him as real

As the burgeoning life surrounding him by day,

And from its falsehoods in the night to steal

Perhaps to Krishna where the Gopis play.