I see yet, bright as summer beams,
The spot where all my childhood wander'd,
And where, in rich Arabian dreams,
I thoughtlessly the moments squander'd;
I see it still, the very same
As when, a smooth-faced sturdy 'duffer,'
I went to school, and, to my shame,
Grew tired of knowledge, and had to suffer.
Ay me! the same old happy home,
With all its fields, and woods, and meadows,
Within whose scope for hours I'd roam,
Or lie within their cooling shadows,
Watching with eager, anxious view
The butterflies; then, full of rapture,
Pick out some one of dazzling hue,
Rush out, and make a sudden capture.
I see the lilac oak, whose wood
Supplied me bows for all my arrows,
While I, another Robin Hood,
Would steal a march upon the sparrows.
What havoc made I then—but now,
When given to less hasty thinking,
I own I drew another bow,
And told some fables without shrinking.
I fancy I can hear the brook,
Along whose banks, with sudden yearning
To turn a Walton, I would hook
Myself a dozen times in learning;
But never came no trout to sight
To gratify my zeal, that I know,
Except, at times, when I would light
Upon some isolated minnow.
But where's the pond where, later still,
And more expert in my researches,
I waded knee-deep with a will
To haul out unsuspecting perches?
Dried up, oh heart! how things will dry
In this cold world of ours, and vanish,
Leaving us still to mope and sigh
O'er thoughts we fain would try to banish.
Per Bacco what a Paradise
We leave behind us when we saunter
From happy boyhood's heavenly ties
To manhood with a wilder canter.
But fled is all that glorious time,
That Iris-like bound earth and heaven
Together, making all sublime
In light from purest sources given.
But I'm forgetting all this while
My readers—that's if I have any—
Would rather wish to joke and smile,
Than sigh with me a rhyming zany.
I bow in deference to this taste
A short stiff bow—a little awkward—
And turn to finish out in haste
This rhyme, begot by looking backward.
There, too, the long straight avenue
In which, with deepest meditation,
I wander'd with this thought in view
To startle with my rhyme a nation.
For there the muse first came, and spread
Her incense, which around still lingers,
And there I shook my solemn head
And counted rhymes upon my fingers.
What nonsense took its flight from prose
In that sweet time when I paraded
Along its length with laurel rows
On either side to keep me shaded
From vulgar minds that could not know
What heavenly footsteps wander'd near me.
Plenty of laurel then, but now,
Ah me, not even a leaf to cheer me.
But sweeter far than new-found rhyme
Were those sweet dreams in which I panted
To make my name go down with time,
By doing deeds the world wanted.
I thought that nothing would suffice,
But walk o'er worlds on some high mission,
As o'er those spirits bound in ice
Strode Dante in his awful vision.
I thought—but if I told you all
The fits of that sweet time, 'twould cost a
Long rhyme, or rhymes, with those that sprawl
Through cantos in your Ariosto.
I drop the sable veil, and sigh
To think those dreams, now long discarded,
Should turn their backs and wish to fly
For what? to leave us rough and bearded.
Farewell, then, oh, my boyhood's home;
In thee the years fled bright and splendid;
But now to me they never come
With such wild flush of hope attended.
And farewell, too, those dreams that pass'd
Before me, ever fresh and novel,
Then sank away, to leave at last—
Diavolo! the pick and shovel.