"SWEET IS CHILDHOOD"

SWEET is childhood-childhood's over,
Kiss and part.

Sweet is youth; but youth's a rover-
So's my heart.

Sweet is rest; but by all showing
Toil is nigh.

We must go. Alas! the going,

Say "good-bye."

Jean Ingelow [1820-1897]

TWILIGHT

WHEN I was young the twilight seemed too long.

How often on the western window-seat

I leaned my book against the misty pane And spelled the last enchanting lines again, The while my mother hummed an ancient song, Or sighed a little and said: "The hour is sweet!" When I, rebellious, clamored for the light.

But now I love the soft approach of night,

And now with folded hands I sit and dream While all too fleet the hours of twilight seem; And thus I know that I am growing old.

O granaries of Age! O manifold
And royal harvest of the common years!
There are in all thy treasure-house no ways
But lead by soft descent and gradual slope
To memories more exquisite than hope.
Thine is the Iris born of olden tears,
And thrice more happy are the happy days
That live divinely in the lingering rays.

A. Mary F. Robinson [1857

Forty Years On

403

YOUTH AND AGE

YOUTH hath many charms,—

Hath many joys, and much delight;
Even its doubts, and vague alarms,

By contrast make it bright:
And yet-and yet-forsooth,
I love Age as well as Youth!

Well, since I love them both,
The good of both I will combine,—
I will look for Youth,

In women,

And look for Age, in wine:

And then-and then-I'll bless

This twain that gives me happiness!

George Arnold [1834-1865]

FORTY YEARS ON

FORTY years on, when afar and asunder
Parted are those who are singing today,

When you look back, and forgetfully wonder

What you were like in your work and your play;
Then, it may be, there will often come o'er you

Glimpses of notes like the catch of a song-
Visions of boyhood shall float them before you,
Echoes of dreamland shall bear them along.
Follow up! Follow up! Follow up! Follow up!
Till the field ring again and again,
With the tramp of the twenty-two men,
Follow up! Follow up!

Routs and discomfitures, rushes and rallies,
Bases attempted, and rescued, and won,
Strife without anger, and art without malice,—
How will it seem to you forty years on?

Then, you will say, not a feverish minute

Strained the weak heart, and the wavering knee,
Never the battle raged hottest, but in it
Neither the last nor the faintest were we!
Follow up! Follow up!

O the great days, in the distance enchanted,
Days of fresh air, in the rain and the sun,
How we rejoiced as we struggled and panted-
Hardly believable, forty years on!

How we discoursed of them, one with another,
Auguring triumph, or balancing fate,

Loved the ally with the heart of a brother,
Hated the foe with a playing at hate!
Follow up! Follow up!

Forty years on, growing older and older,
Shorter in wind, and in memory long,

Feeble of foot and rheumatic of shoulder,
What will it help you that once you were strong?
God gives us bases to guard or beleaguer,

Games to play out, whether earnest or fun,
Fights for the fearless, and goals for the eager,

Twenty, and thirty, and forty years on!

Follow up! Follow up!

Edward Ernest Bowen [1836-1901]

DREGS

THE fire is out, and spent the warmth thereof,
(This is the end of every song man sings!)
The golden wine is drunk, the dregs remain,
Bitter as wormwood and as salt as pain;

And health and hope have gone the way of love
Into that drear oblivion of lost things.

Ghosts go along with us until the end;
This was a mistress, this, perhaps, a friend.
With pale, indifferent eyes, we sit and wait
For the dropped curtain and the closing gate:
This is the end of all the songs man sings.

Ernest Dowson [1867-1900]

The Paradox of Time

44

THE PARADOX OF TIME

A VARIATION ON RONSARD

Le temps s'en va, le temps s'en va, ma dame!
Las! le temps non: mais nous nous en allons!"

TIME goes, you say? Ah no!
Alas, Time stays, we go;

Or else, were this not so,

What need to chain the hours,
For Youth were always ours?

Time goes, you say?—ah no!

Ours is the eyes' deceit

Of men whose flying feet

We

Lead through some landscape low;
pass, and think we see

The earth's fixed surface flee:-
Alas, Time stays-we go!

Once in the days of old,

Your locks were curling gold,

And mine had shamed the crow.

Now, in the self-same stage,

We've reached the silver age;

Time goes, you say?—ah no!

Once, when

my voice was strong,

I filled the woods with song

To praise your "rose" and "snow";

My bird, that sang, is dead;
Where are your roses fled?

Alas, Time stays—we go!

See, in what traversed ways,
What backward Fate delays

The hopes we used to know;
Where are our old desires?—
Ah, where those vanished fires?

Time goes, you say?—ah no!

405

How far, how far, O Sweet,

The past behind our feet
Lies in the even-glow!

Now, on the forward way,

Let us fold hands, and pray;

Alas, Time stays,

AGE

we go!
Austin Dobson [1840-

SNOW and stars, the same as ever
In the days when I was young,—
But their silver song, ah never,
Never now is sung!

Cold the stars are, cold the earth is,
Everything is grim and cold!

Strange and drear the sound of mirth is—
Life and I are old!

William Winter [1836

OMNIA SOMNIA

DAWN drives the dreams away, yet some abide.
Once, in a tide of pale and sunless weather,
I dreamed I wandered on a bare hillside,
When suddenly the birds sang all together.

Still it was Winter, even in the dream;

There was no leaf nor bud nor young grass springing;
The skies shone cold above the frost-bound stream:
It was not Spring, and yet the birds were singing.

Blackbird and thrush and plaintive willow-wren,
Chaffinch and lark and linnet, all were calling;
A golden web of music held me then,

Innumerable voices, rising, falling.

O, never do the birds of April sing

More sweet than in that dream I still remember: Perchance the heart may keep its songs of Spring Even through the wintry dream of life's December. Rosamund Marriott Watson [1863