Classic Poem

Looking youthward from to-day,
As I thoughtfully survey
Vistas of the foregone years,
In the farther mist appears,
Out of dim oblivion
Like a dream, the form of one
Whom the kind gods bade to run
Linked by him, through youth with me,
Sharing all things cousinly.
So we travelled hand in hand
As along our thoughtless ways
We invented pleasant lays
For our block-built soldier-land;
Had our squabbles and escapes,
Harmless larcenies of grapes
From some fair forbidden vine;
Or defied the rainy skies
In an attic paradise; —
What boy-scrapes were not our line?
With adventures we were rife,
Being, in our varied life,
Fellow-scarers-off of tramps,
Fellow-novices in camps,
Fellow-shipwrecked mariners,
Fellow-openers of burrs,
At the time the squirrel stirs,
— Then we rose before the sun —
Fellow-plodders with the gun,
Hark'ning where the partridge whirs.
Later youth might well unfold
Many memories of gold,
And might eloquently praise
Woodland trails and sunlit bays.

Though I wish we still might go
Child-like on, proceeding slow
Thro' bright years of wandering,
And divide the joys they bring,
We alas, may not control
Future years, when duty's roll
Calls each off, and each doth spring
To pursue a separate task.
Favors daring not to ask,
We obey a sterner plan:
On the threshold youth's fair span
Hath its end, like all things mortal,
Time hath drawn the crimson portal
And Life welcomes in a man.
Should we cruelly pretend
Our good times are at an end?
Is the Future something lost,
To be bargained off at cost?
Shall days spent to learn the love
That God gave, yield nothing more
Than the moments they contained?
From God's cup delight we quaffed
At the brim; the deeper draught,
With its pledge, is yet undrained;
For the beauty that we saw
Brings into the heart a law
That shall sway the future years,
Spite of difference or tears.
Though we part, there still shall bind
Nobler fellowship of mind
And a secret sympathy
In fair views that sense may see
And the inward vision find.