As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,

This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,

This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,

The world should once more have a poet,

Such as it had

In the ages glad,

Long ago!

James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]

AFTER MANY YEARS

THE song that once I dreamed about,
The tender, touching thing,

As radiant as the rose without-

The love of wind and wing;
The perfect verses to the tune
Of woodland music set,
As beautiful as afternoon,
Remain unwritten yet.

It is too late to write them now-
The ancient fire is cold;

No ardent lights illume the brow,

As in the days of old.

I cannot dream the dream again;
But, when the happy birds
Are singing in the sunny rain,
I think I hear its words.

I think I hear the echo still

Of long forgotten tones,

When evening winds are on the hills,

And sunset fires the cones.

After Many Years

But only in the hours supreme,

With songs of land and sea, The lyrics of the leaf and stream, This echo comes to me.

No longer doth the earth reveal
Her gracious green and gold;
I sit where youth was once, and feel
That I am growing old.

The lustre from the face of things

Is wearing all away;

Like one who halts with tired wings,
I rest and muse to-day.

There is a river in the range

I love to think about;

Perhaps the searching feet of change

Have never found it out.

Ah! oftentimes I used to look
Upon its banks, and long

To steal the beauty of that brook
And put it in a song.

I wonder if the slopes of moss,
In dreams so dear to me→

The falls of flower and flower-like floss-
Are as they used to be!

I wonder if the waterfalls,

The singers far and fair,

That gleamed between the wet, green walls,

Are still the marvels there!

Ah! let me hope that in that place

The old familiar things

To which I turn a wistful face

Have never taken wings.

Let me retain the fancy still,

That, past the lordly range,
There always shines, in folds of hill,
One spot secure from change!

435

I trust that yet the tender screen
That shades a certain nook
Remains, with all its gold and green,
The glory of the brook.

It hides a secret to the birds

And waters only known-
The letters of two lovely words—
A poem on a stone.

Perhaps the lady of the past,
Upon these lines may light,
The purest verses and the last

That I may ever write.

She need not fear a word of blame;

Her tale the flowers keep;

The wind that heard me breathe her name
Has been for years asleep.

But in the night, and when the rain

The troubled torrents fills,

I often think I see again

The river in the hills:

And when the day is very near,
And birds are on the wing,

My spirit fancies it can hear

The song I cannot sing.

Henry Clarence Kendall [1841-1882]

THREE SEASONS

"A CUP for hope!" she said,

In springtime ere the bloom was old:
The crimson wine was poor and cold
By her mouth's richer red.

"A cup for love!" how low,
How soft the words; and all the while
Her blush was rippling with a smile
Like summer after snow.

The Old Familiar Faces

437

"A cup for memory!"

Cold cup that one must drain alone:

While autumn winds are up and moan
Across the barren sea.

Hope, memory, love:

Hope for fair morn, and love for day,
And memory for the evening gray
And solitary dove.

Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894]

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces-

How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed,

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb (1775-1834]

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS

OFT in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimmed and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends, so linked together,

I've seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

Thomas Moore [1779-1852]

"TEARS, IDLE TEARS"

From "The Princess"

TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.