The Garden of Survival by Algernon Blackwood

I WATCHED the little bird against the paling sky, and my thoughts, following the happy singing, went slowly backwards into the half-forgotten past. They led me again through the maze of gorgeous and mysterious hopes, un-remembered now so many years, that had marked my childhood. Few of these, if any, it seemed, had known fulfilment. I stole back with them, past the long exile in great Africa, into the region of my youth and early boyhood.

And, as though a hand uncovered it deliberately, I recalled an earliest dream strangest, perhaps, of all the mysterious dreams of that far time. It had, I thought, remained unrealized, as, certainly, till this moment, it had lain forgotten a boyish dream that behind the veils of the Future some one waited for me with the patience of a perfect love that was my due.