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As if I had lived it or dreamed it,
As if I had acted or schemed it,
Long ago!

And yet, could I live it over,

This life that stirs in my brain, Could I be both maiden and lover, Moon and tide, bee and clover,

As I seem to have been, once again,
Could I but speak it and show it,

This pleasure more sharp than pain,
That baffles and lures me so,

The world should once more have a poet,

Such as it had

In the ages glad,

Long ago!

James Russell Lowell [1819-1891]

AN IMMORALITY

SING we for love and idleness,

Naught else is worth the having.
Though I have been in many a land,
There is naught else in living.

And I would rather have my sweet,
Though rose-leaves die of grieving,
Than do high deeds in Hungary

To pass all men's believing.

Ezra Pound [1885

THREE SEASONS

"A CUP for hope!" she said,

In springtime ere the bloom was old:
The crimson wine was poor and cold
By her mouth's richer red.

"A cup for love!" how low,
How soft the words; and all the while
Her blush was rippling with a smile
Like summer after snow.

The Old Familiar Faces

"A cup for memory!"

Cold cup that one must drain alone:

While autumn winds are up and moan
Across the barren sea.

Hope, memory, love:

Hope for fair morn, and love for day,
And memory for the evening gray
And solitary dove.

453

Christina Georgina Rossetti [1830-1894]

THE OLD FAMILIAR FACES

I HAVE had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful schooldays,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have been laughing, I have been carousing,
Drinking late, sitting late, with my bosom cronies,-
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I loved a Love once, fairest among women:
Closed are her doors on me, I must not see her,—
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

I have a friend, a kinder friend has no man:
Like an ingrate, I left my friend abruptly;
Left him, to muse on the old familiar faces.

Ghost-like, I paced round the haunts of my childhood. Earth seemed a desert I was bound to traverse,

Seeking to find the old familiar faces.

Friend of my bosom, thou more than a brother,
Why wert not thou born in my father's dwelling?
So might we talk of the old familiar faces-

How some they have died, and some they have left me, And some are taken from me; all are departed,+

All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Charles Lamb [1775-1834]

THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS
OFT in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me:
The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimmed and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!

Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends, so linked together,

I've seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather,

I feel like one

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,
And all but he departed!
Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

Thomas Moore [1779-1852]

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TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

The Pet Name

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one

That sinks with all we love below the verge;

So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others; deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life, the days that are no more!

455

Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]

THE PET NAME

the name

Which from their lips seemed a caress."

---MISS MILFORD'S “DRAMATIC SCENES "

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Though I write books, it will be read

Upon the leaves of none,

And afterward, when I am dead,

Will ne'er be graved for sight or tread,

Across my funeral-stone.

This name, whoever chance to call,
Perhaps your smile may win:
Nay, do not smile! mine eyelids fall
Over mine eyes and feel withal
The sudden tears within.

Is there a leaf, that greenly grows
Where summer meadows bloom,
But gathereth the winter snows,
And changeth to the hue of those,
If lasting till they come?

Is there a word, or jest, or game,
But time incrusteth round
With sad associate thoughts the same?
And so to me my very name

Assumes a mournful sound.

My brother gave that name to me
When we were children twain,
When names acquired baptismally
Were hard to utter, as to see
That life had any pain.

No shade was on us then, save one

Of chestnuts from the hill;

And through the word our laugh did run As part thereof: the mirth being done, He calls me by it still.

Nay, do not smile! I hear in it

What none of you can hear,

The talk upon the willow seat,
The bird and wind that did repeat
Around, our human cheer.

I hear the birthday's noisy bliss
My sisters' woodland glee,
My father's praise I did not miss
When stooping down, he cared to kiss
The poet at his knee,--

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