102 THE LETTERS OF MY YOUTH. THE LETTERS OF MY YOUTH. LOOK at the leaves I gather up in trembling- Deep as the tumult in an archèd sea-cave, Whose is this hand that wheresoe'er it wanders, With what a healthful appetite of spirit See how he twists his coronals of fancy ONE YEAR AGO. What, is this I?-this miserable complex Surely we are by feeling as by knowing- 103 Lord Houghton. ONE YEAR AGO. ONE year ago my path was green, There is a love that is to last When the hot days of youth are past: I took a leaflet from her braid Love! broken should have been thy bow One year ago. Walter Savage Landor. 104 THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE. "TEARS, idle tears, I know not what they mean, "Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail That sinks with all we love below the verge; “Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns The casement slowly grows a glimmering square; "Dear as remember'd kisses after death, A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her Love The frozen wind crept on above, The freezing stream below. There was no leaf upon the forest bare, No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air Except the mill-wheel's sound. P. B. Shelley. DESERTED. YE banks and braes o' bonnie Doon, And I sae fu' o' care! Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird That sings upon the bough; Thou minds me o' the happy days When my fau'se Luve was true. Thou'll break my heart, thou bonnie bird For sae I sat, and sae I sang, HOLLOW is the oak beside the sunny waters drooping; Thither came, when I was young, happy children trooping; Dream I now, or hear I now-far, their mellow whooping! Gay below the cowslip bank, see the billow dances; Farther, where the river glides by the wooded cover, Where the merlin singeth low, with the hawk above her, Came a foot and shone a smile-woe is me, the Lover! Leaflets on the hollow oak still as greenly quiver; |