Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume I. Of Home: of Friendship. 1904. | | | | Poems of Home: IV. Youth | | Youth | | Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) |
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VERSE, a breeze ’mid blossoms straying, | |
| Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee— | |
| Both were mine! Life went a-maying | |
| With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, | |
| When I was young! | 5 |
| When I was young?—Ah, woful when! | |
| Ah! for the change ’twixt Now and Then! | |
| This breathing house not built with hands, | |
| This body that does me grievous wrong, | |
| O’er aery cliffs and glittering sands | 10 |
| How lightly then it flashed along: | |
| Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, | |
| On winding lakes and rivers wide, | |
| That ask no aid of sail or oar, | |
| That fear no spite of wind or tide! | 15 |
| Nought cared this body for wind or weather | |
| When Youth and I lived in ’t together. | | | | |
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