Classic Poem

I WEARY of living from hand to mouth,
Battling for mean necessities:
I'm in a desert, and a drouth
Comes over all the oases
Where I have sought myself to ease
In lawful and unlawful ways:
I had no care for things like these
Far away in the Golden Days.

Let me go where my father went—
My father who was good to me!
This World has grown so virulent
And sodden now with misery!
But once we fought it joyously,
Ever on some crusade ablaze
For spicy isles o' the wind-swept sea—
Far away in the Golden Days.

O, with some glad intoxicant
These wasted nerves of mine relieve!
Do me a magic, and enchant
These sordid chambers to conceive
In crimson colors, while I weave
My fancies to the airy phase
Of things he taught me to believe—
Far away in the Golden Days.

Nay, what now? What aura strange—
What glamor of new life allays
This old despair? Again I range
Far away in the Golden Days.