Remind me not, remind me not,
Of those beloved, those vanish'd hours,
When all my soul was given to thee;
Hours that may never be forgot,
Till Time unnerves our vital powers,
And thou and I shall cease to be.

Can I forget---canst thou forget,
When playing with thy golden hair,
How quick thy fluttering heart did move?
Oh! by my soul, I see thee yet,
With eyes so languid, breast so fair,
And lips, though silent, breathing love.

When thus reclining on my breast,
Those eyes threw back a glance so sweet,

When the loud day for men who sow and reap
Grows still, and on the silence of the town
The unsubstantial veils of night and sleep,
The meed of the day's labour, settle down,
Then for me in the stillness of the night
The wasting, watchful hours drag on their course,
And in the idle darkness comes the bite
Of all the burning serpents of remorse;
Dreams seethe; and fretful infelicities
Are swarming in my over-burdened soul,
And Memory before my wakeful eyes
With noiseless hand unwinds her lengthy scroll.

Forget?
Ah, never!
Your eyes, your voice, your lips.
Those little ways of love,
Half-childish yet all-wise
That held me but a slave to you,
Will never loose their bonds.
The power to forget
Would Fate but yield to me.

Remember?
Ah, too well!
The hurt, the pain, the grief.
The wrack of nightly dreams,
The ruth of brooding days,
Have left a lesion in my soul
That only Heaven can heal.
Remembrance is the lot
That Fate does hold for me.

I put my foot in cold water
and hold it there: early mornings
they had to wade through broken ice
to find the traps in the deep channel
with their hands, drag up the chains and
the drowned beaver. The slow current
of the life below tugs at me all day.
When I dream at night, they save a place for me,
no matter how small, somewhere by the fire.

But may a Rural Pen try to set forth
Such a Great Fathers Ancient Grace and worth
I undertake a no less Arduous Theme
Then the Old Sages found the Chaldae Dream
'Tis more then Tythes of a profound respect
That must be paid such a Melchizedeck
Oxford this light with tongues and Arts doth trim
And then his Northern Town doth Challeng him
His Time and Strength he Center'd there in this
To do good works, and be what now he is.
His fulgent Virtues there and learned Strains
Tall comely Presence, Life unsoil'd with Stains

I looked down on a daisied lawn
To where a host of tiny eyes
Of snow and gold from velvet shone
And made me think of starry skies.

I looked up to the vasty night
Where stars were very small indeed,
And in their galaxy of light
They made me think of daised mead.

I took a daisy in my hold;
Its snowy rays were tipped with rose,
And with its tiny boss of gold
I thought--how like a star it glows!

I dreamt I plucked from Heaven's field
A star and held it in my hand.
Said I: "The might of God I wield,

As I lay at your feet that afternoon,
Little we spoke, you sat and mused,
Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune,

And I worshipped you, with a sense confused
Of the good time gone and the bad on the way,
While my hungry eyes your face perused

To catch and brand on my soul for aye
The subtle smile which had grown my doom.
Drinking sweet poison hushed I lay

Till the sunset shimmered athwart the room.
I rose to go. You stood so fair
And dim in the dead day's tender gloom:

All at once, or ever I was aware,

‘Anticipation is sweeter than realisation.’

It may be, yet I have not found it so.
In those first golden dreams of future fame
I did not find such happiness as came
When toil was crowned with triumph. Now I know
My words have recognition, and will go
Straight to some listening heart, my early aim,
To win the idle glory of a name,
Pales like a candle in the noonday’s glow.

So with the deeper joys of which I dreamed:
Life yields more rapture than did childhood’s fancies,
And each year brings more pleasure than I waited.

The light that spills through the crack in the door
Illumines only her face
And my grandmother smiles
If only all of life was this easy
To only be a child forever
With nothing to care about
And nothing to lose

Every day in the schoolyard
There was kickball
Dodge ball
Hopscotch
Friends were many, we were all the same
And nobody ever cried
When mothers called us home

Be the best, they told us

Rouse ye! torpid daylight-dreamers, cast your carking cares away!
As calm air to troubled water, so my night is to your day;
All the dreary day you labour, groping after common sense,
And your eyes ye will not open on the night's magnificence.
Ye would scow were I to tell you how a guiding radiance gleams
On the outer world of action from my inner world of dreams.

When, with mind released from study, late I lay note down to sleep,
From the midst of facts and figures, into boundless space I leap;