Classic Poem

What do you see, dear hill-top pair,
Side by side in the quiet there,
Looking down through the golden air
On the days of long ago?

Sounds of the valley's push and throng,
Din of its labor and cries of its wrong, — .
Do they rise and blend to an evening song,
As you stand and listen so?

Is the valley filling with shadows dim?
Do the hills grow bright on the eastern rim,
The hills where you played so free of limb,
In the days of long ago?

Tell us your secrets, our two-in-one!
Do fifty years of the rising sun
Draw love the closer for each year run, —
Will you whisper, you who know?

Beautiful secrets that none can tell
Till sunsets chant and the roses spell, —
As they do for twos! as two knew well
In the days of long ago.

But say, O lover by love long taught,
Why, under the gray the years have brought,
She stands as a maiden to our thought,
And a rose that waits to blow.

Tell us the secret of home-spun ways,
Of spinning-wheel hours in city days,
Clean and calm as a Quaker phrase
Of the simple long ago.

Tell what you see on the farther side,
Where the new horizons open wide,
And you hear the step of a coming Guide
The way of the hills to show.

Out of the quiet that holds you there
There seems to float through the golden air,
Like the brooding music after prayer
Or a song of long ago: —

" Little we see; but hand in hand
Fearless we turn to the still, new land,
Fearless to go as here to stand;
For this in our hearts we know, —

" Wherever we go, Love goeth too;
Whatever may pass, Love lasteth through;
And Love shall be sweet and dear and true
As in days of long ago."