O happy days, O happy days,
Ye pass, but do not die,
Bright visitants, like summer rain
Dropped softly from the sky;
Which rests awhile on earth,
And sinks unseen, and reappears again
In wondrous birth on birth,
New born in herb and flower, in bud and tree,
And fountain waters flowing clear and free.

O happy days, thy glow is on
Green slope and heathery hill,
Reflection bright of happy eyes,
Which there have looked their fill.
Ye choose ye valleys sweet,
Where o’er the water-song the dim woods rise,
Your votaries to meet,
And sweetest far your home where Lery bright
Plays in your smile with pebbles and the light.

We find you where we left you last,
When that glad summer noon
We turned to go, half gay, half sad,
An end had come so soon;
Just where the wider sweep,
With oak, and fern, and purple heather clad,
Curves from the shoulder steep,
Whereon ye watch the streamlet down the glade
Send its white thoughts through narrowing glooms of shade.

The Lery above Tal-y-Bont

Look, now th’ imprisoned light is spread
On a clear bed of rock;
And the next moment tossed about,
A fairy shuttlecock;
Then in a still pool deep,
Heart laid to heart in chambers hollowed out,
The quiet wood doth sleep.
So wooing still and wooed, demure or gay,
The Lery down the vale a soul of joy doth stray.

Thy train, dear happy days, are here,
Each leaflet in its place,
They tell me round yon jutting rock
That I shall see your face.
Lo! all are paddling there,
For happy time recks not of mortal clock,
The children of last year.
Our fishers throw, while on the pebbly ridge
Tea boils, and rash feet shake the miner’s bridge.

Each tendril the old welcome gives,
Each leaflet in its place,
The very ants are marching still
Along the selfsame trace;
The hours themselves forget
To drop another shadow on the rill,
So there it lingers yet,
And year by year we wake up with a kiss
The sleeping princess of our summer bliss.