| Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922. | | | | Song: ‘If once I could gather in song’ | | By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878–1962) |
| | | IF once I could gather in song | |
| A flower from my garden of dreams— | |
| The dew from its petals unshaken, | |
| When starry and bright they awaken— | |
| All men to the wonder would throng. | 5 |
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| Though ever at dawning I go | |
| By the marge of the life-giving streams | |
| That, shadow’d by blossoms upspringing, | |
| Remember the hills in their singing, | |
| The fells of their birth in their flow; | 10 |
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| Or early or late though I fare | |
| To gather my garden of dreams | |
| For the barren, forsaken and lonely; | |
| I bring from the shadow-world only | |
| Pale blossoms that perish in air. | 15 | | | |
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