By the Lake

Moonlight gleams upon the lake;
Noiselessly the waters break
On the white and pebbly shore,
Then return, to break once more.

Yonder moon, the sky’s bright green,
Glitters in its depths serene,
And the stars, above that glow,
Seem another heaven below.

On the white lake shore I stand,
Where the waters meet the land,
Shadows all around me lie,
Shutting out the starry sky—

Shutting out the world around,
In their close and narrow bound,
And the past awhile doth seem,
But a half-forgotten dream.

In the starry night, alone,
Earthly cares and thoughts are gone.
In this silence, deep and still,
Who could harbor thought of ill?

Far from all the care and strife,
All the agony of life,
Who would deem the sun could rise
On earth’s thousand miseries?

One by one my thoughts come back
To the old, familiar track,
And I turn me from the shore,
To the busy world once more.
Adelbert Older.