Classic Poem

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.