A voice keeps calling the speaker back across a river—an image for the passage of years—to a place where leaves still quiver and lilacs bloom. The speaker may be addressing a lost self or someone who shared that early world, but the repeated “come over, come back” feels like a gentle, insistent summons. What he longs for is childhood as an “everlasting garden,” a green and blue heaven where time brought no burden. He misses not a particular event but a state of innocence: a time when love existed without being named or examined, “unconscious, knowing not love.” The images of quivering green leaves, lilac, and clearing sky suggest freshness and an almost Eden-like simplicity. Yet these things are placed across a “dark torrent of years,” so they feel both vivid and unreachable. That tension between invitation and distance gives the poem its tender, wistful ache.
Childhood Calls — Summary
Come over, come over the deepening river, Come over again the dark torrent of years, Come over, come back where the green leaves quiver, And the lilac still blooms and the grey sky clears.
Come, come back to the everlasting garden, To that green heaven, and the blue heaven above. Come back to the time when time brought no burden And love was unconscious, knowing not love.