The Woodman's Dream - A poem by Albert Bigelow Paine

The Woodman's Dream.

ON the bank of a flowing river,
   Far up 'mid the mountains green,
A woodman sighed for the prairies wide,
   And the cities he ne'er had seen.

Said the woodman, "I'm weary of mountains^___
I am sick of the river's flow;
But lo, I have been so long shut in,
   That I know not where to go."

On the banks of that murmuring river
He dreamed a wonderful dream;
And an angel came, in an aureate flame,
And stood by the flowing stream.

And the woodman said, "Oh, angel,
I am old and the tide runs low,
But I want to go forth to the great, wide earth,
Oh, show me the way to go.

"I want to behold the cities
And the glories of other lands;"
But the angel was gone, and he woke at dawn
In a city not made with hands.

^__Albert Bigelow Paine.