'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 When they were roses. '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, 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; 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 And 'flowerful closes'; We roused the rooks with rounds and glees, Played hide-and-seek behind the trees, -- Then plucked these roses. Louise was one -- light, glib Louise, 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'; -- 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 You teased her kitten. 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, When my High-Mightiness should please, She'd come for asking. Louise was grave when last we met; Bell's beauty, like a sun, has set; And Ruth, Heaven bless her, Ruth that I wooed, -- and wooed in vain, -- Has gone where neither grief nor pain Can now distress her. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...PLAINT OF A YOUNG LAWYER by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE AMPHITRYON: PASTORAL DIALOGUE by JOHN DRYDEN BEING DAD ON CHRISTMAS EVE by EDGAR ALBERT GUEST AN INQUIRY; A PHANTASY by THOMAS HARDY |