Day Dreams
Sitting idly one even
In fanciful vein
Childhood’s wonderland golden
I live o’er again
Beyond the horizon
I see far away
The crimson red sunset
The farewell of Day
How oft I have fancied
Thus gazing afar
Beyond the horizon
The better worlds are
Here shadows may darken
And bleak winds may blow
Away over yonder
If we could but go
There’s sunshine & gladness
And beauty for aye
Across the green landscape
Just over the way
So when the clouds gather
And winds whistle chill
Beyond the horizon
Away o’er the hill
I dream the blue heavens
Are cloudless and fair
And peace like a river
For aye floweth there
Safest happy delusion
For well do we know
Beyond the horizon
No mortal can go
None reach its fair border
Though run we all day
For far as we travel
Tis further away
Elizabeth lived all but he last four years in Victoria’s reign. She was born in 1855, died in 1905. Born in smoky London, England, she had rickets as a child, cured, it seems, by living in the country and copious amounts of cod liver oil. Her novel-reading was disapproved by her youngest sister who read only “improving” books. I am up to 1866 in transcribing her father’s journal; Elizabeth, known as Lizzie, was then eleven, oldest of seven children, with another to come in 1869 – your great-grandmother.
Upon consideration, I believe the best name for my family history hobby is time-travelling. Through Lizzie’s father’s journals I can live in the minutest detail in Victorian England…