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| | “Dans un grenier qu’on est bien à vingt ans.” |
| —BERANGER. |
HERE is the street—the house is standing yet! | |
| Four stories up the little window gleams. | |
| The basement still announces “Rooms to Let”; | |
| Through the wide door the dusty sunlight streams. | |
| But how the place has changed! Across the way | 5 |
| A tenement its swarming bulk uprears— | |
| ’Twas here I weathered it for many a day, | |
| With Youth and Hope for friends, at Twenty Years. | |
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| A small hall-room! I seek it half by stealth— | |
| Who cares? the world may know it if it will! | 10 |
| The worst is told. I had stout heart, good health, | |
| A modest clerkship, wants more modest still; | |
| Companions too, (I had companions then!)— | |
| What room in all my “up-town palace” hears | |
| Such peals of mirth as yonder little den | 15 |
| When I and Youth kept house, at Twenty Years! | |
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| ’Twas here I brought my bride. In that dim place | |
| The too brief summer of our joy first smiled. | |
| Which of your carpet-knights, my queenly Grace, | |
| To such a lot will woo your mother’s child? | 20 |
| Just Powers! how dared we to be gay and glad, | |
| To face the world, unvexed by cramping fears? | |
| Rash?—reckless? We were mad!—how nobly mad | |
| With the brave wine of Love and Twenty Years! | |
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| Once, as we listened at the window there, | 25 |
| In the warm sunlight of an April day, | |
| A sound of loyal thunder filled the air— | |
| The Massachusetts Sixth marched down Broadway. | |
| O gallant hearts and times! O drum and fife! | |
| In ’62 I joined the volunteers. | 30 |
| Poor wounded soldier, lonely waiting wife, | |
| We learned what glory meant, at Twenty Years! | |
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| It’s time to go. The place looks chill and drear. | |
| Fate! were it lot of mine to overlive | |
| But half the happy days I’ve counted here, | 35 |
| I’d give—what have I that I would not give?— | |
| Again to struggle on, to breast the tide, | |
| To know the worst of Fortune’s frowns and fears, | |
| Brave heart within, my darling at my side, | |
| And all the world to win, at Twenty Years! | 40 |
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