Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
My PlaymateJohn Greenleaf Whittier (18071892)
T
Their song was soft and low;
The blossoms in the sweet May wind
Were falling like the snow.
The orchard birds sang clear;
The sweetest and the saddest day
It seem’d of all the year.
My playmate left her home,
And took with her the laughing spring,
The music and the bloom.
She laid her hand in mine:
What more could ask the bashful boy
Who fed her father’s kine?
The constant years told o’er
Their seasons with as sweet May morns,
But she came back no more.
Of uneventful years;
Still o’er and o’er I sow the spring
And reap the autumn ears.
Her summer roses blow;
The dusky children of the sun
Before her come and go.
She smooths her silken gown,—
No more the homespun lap wherein
I shook the walnuts down.
The brown nuts on the hill,
And still the May-day flowers make sweet
The woods of Follymill.
The bird builds in the tree,
The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill
The slow song of the sea.
And how the old time seems,—
If ever the pines of Ramoth wood
Are sounding in her dreams.
Does she remember mine?
And what to her is now the boy
Who fed her father’s kine?
For other eyes than ours,—
That other hands with nuts are fill’d,
And other laps with flowers?
Our mossy seat is green,
Its fringing violets blossom yet,
The old trees o’er it lean.
A sweeter memory blow;
And there in spring the veeries sing
The song of long ago.
Are moaning like the sea,—
The moaning of the sea of change
Between myself and thee!