VISTAS
by: Odell Shepard (1884-1967)
- S I walked
through the dream-peopled streets
- Of the wind-rustling, elm-shaded city
- Where all of the houses were friends
- And the trees were all lovers of her,
- The spell of its old enchantment
- Was woven again to subdue me
- With magic of flickering shadows,
- Blown branches and leafy stir.
-
- Street after street, as I passed,
- Lured me and beckoned me onward,
- Releasing like flowery fragrance
- Remembrance and hope on the air.
- At the end of each breeze-blurred vista
- She seemed to be watching and waiting,
- With leaf shadows over her gown
- And sunshine gliding her hair.
-
- For there was a dream that the kind God
- Withheld, while granting us many.--
- But surely, I think, we shall come
- Sometime, at the last, she and I,
- To the heaven He keeps for all tired souls,
- The quiet suburban gardens
- Where He Himself walks in the evening
- Beneath the rose-dropping sky,
- And watches the balancing elm-trees
- With a sob of delight for their beauty,
- And hears through their lofty arches
- The night breeze ruffle by.
"Vistas" is reprinted
from Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1915. Ed. William
Stanley Braithwaite. New York: Gomme & Marshall, 1915. |
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