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.
