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“Si jeunesse savait?—”
I PLUNGE my hand among the leaves: | |
| (An alien touch but dust perceives, | |
| Nought else supposes;) | |
| For me those fragrant ruins raise | |
| Clear memory of the vanished days | 5 |
| When they were roses. | |
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| “If youth but knew!” Ah, “if,” in truth?— | |
| I can recall with what gay youth, | |
| To what light chorus, | |
| Unsobered yet by time or change, | 10 |
| We roamed the many-gabled Grange, | |
| All life before us; | |
| |
| Braved the old clock-tower’s dust and damp | |
| To catch the dim Arthurian camp | |
| In misty distance; | 15 |
| Peered at the still-room’s sacred stores, | |
| Or rapped at walls for sliding doors | |
| Of feigned existence. | |
| |
| What need had we for thoughts or cares! | |
| The hot sun parched the old parterres | 20 |
| And “flowerful closes”; | |
| We roused the rooks with rounds and glees, | |
| Played hide-and-seek behind the trees,— | |
| Then plucked these roses. | |
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| Louise was one—light, glib Louise, | 25 |
| So freshly freed from school decrees | |
| You scarce could stop her; | |
| And Bell, the Beauty, unsurprised | |
| At fallen locks that scandalized | |
| Our dear “Miss Proper:”— | 30 |
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| Shy Ruth, all heart and tenderness, | |
| Who wept—like Chaucer’s Prioress, | |
| When Dash was smitten; | |
| Who blushed before the mildest men, | |
| Yet waxed a very Corday when | 35 |
| You teased her kitten. | |
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| I loved them all. Bell first and best; | |
| Louise the next—for days of jest | |
| Or madcap masking; | |
| And Ruth, I thought,—why, failing these, | 40 |
| When my High-Mightiness should please, | |
| She’d come for asking. | |
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| Louise was grave when last we met; | |
| Bell’s beauty, like a sun, has set; | |
| And Ruth, Heaven bless her, | 45 |
| Ruth that I wooed,—and wooed in vain, | |
| Has gone where neither grief nor pain | |
| Can now distress her. | |
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