SWIFT fly the years. Too swift, alas! | |
| A full half-century has flown, | |
| Since, through these gardens fair and pastures lone | |
| And down the busy street, | |
| Or ’neath the elms whose shadows soft are thrown | 5 |
| Upon the common’s trampled grass, | |
| Pattered my childish feet. | |
| Gone are the happy games we played as boys! | |
| Gone the glad shouts, the free and careless joys, | |
| The fights, the feuds, the friendships that we had, | 10 |
| And all the trivial things that had the power, | |
| When Youth was in its early flower, | |
| To make us sad or glad! | |
| Gone the familiar faces that we knew, | |
| Silent the voices that once thrilled us through, | 15 |
| And ghosts are everywhere! | |
| They peer from every window-pane, | |
| From every alley, street, and lane | |
| They whisper on the air. | |
| They haunt the meadows green and wide, | 20 |
| The garden-walk, the river-side, | |
| The beating mill adust with meal, | |
| The rope-walk with its whirring wheel, | |
| The elm grove on the sunny ridge, | |
| The rattling draw, the echoing bridge; | 25 |
| The lake on which we used to float | |
| What time the blue jay screamed his note, | |
| The voiceful pines that ceaselessly | |
| Breathed back their answer to the sea, | |
| The school-house, where we learned to spell, | 30 |
| The church, the solemn-sounding bell,— | |
| All, all, are full of them. | |
| Where’er we turn, howe’er we go, | |
| Ever we hear their voices dim | |
| That sing to us as in a dream | 35 |
| The song of “Long ago.” | |
| |
| Ah me, how many an autumn day | |
| We watched with palpitating breast | |
| Some stately ship, from India or Cathay, | |
| Laden with spicy odors from the East, | 40 |
| Come sailing up the bay! | |
| Unto our youthful hearts elate | |
| What wealth beside their real freight | |
| Of rich material things they bore! | |
| Ours were Arabian cargoes, fair, | 45 |
| Mysterious, exquisite, and rare; | |
| From far romantic lands built out of air | |
| On an ideal shore | |
| Sent by Aladdin, Camaralzaman, | |
| Morgiana, or Badoura, or the Khan. | 50 |
| Treasures of Sindbad, vague and wondrous things | |
| Beyond the reach of aught but Youth’s imaginings. * * * * * | |
| How oft half-fearfully we prowled | |
| Around those gabled houses, quaint and old, | |
| Whose legends, grim and terrible, | 55 |
| Of witch and ghost that used in them to dwell, | |
| Around the twilight fire were told; | |
| While huddled close with anxious ear | |
| We heard them, quivering with fear, | |
| And, if the daylight half o’ercame the spell, | 60 |
| ’T was with a lingering dread | |
| We oped the door and touched the stinging bell | |
| In the dark shop that led, | |
| For some had fallen under time’s disgrace, | |
| To meaner uses and a lower place. | 65 |
| But as we heard it ring, our hearts’ quick pants | |
| Almost were audible; | |
| For with its sound it seemed to rouse the dead, | |
| And wake some ghost from out the dusky haunts | |
| Where faint the daylight fell. | 70 |
| |
| Upon the sunny wharves how oft | |
| Within some dim secluded loft | |
| We played, and dreamed the livelong day, | |
| And all the world was ours in play; | |
| We cared not, let it slip away, | 75 |
| And let the sandy hour-glass run, | |
| Time is so long, and life so long | |
| When it has just begun. | |
| |
