Pot-pourri

“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.

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