 | Poems by William Wetmore Story |  |
236
TWENTY YEARS AGO.
Nina, do you those nights remember
When in the moonlight's amber glow
(Those blissful evenings of September)
We sat and watched the river's flow?
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago!
When in the moonlight's amber glow
(Those blissful evenings of September)
We sat and watched the river's flow?
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago!
Ah, then we swore to love forever,
While feeling made our voices low,
And Fate we dared our hearts to sever,
For Youth and Love no danger know—
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago!
While feeling made our voices low,
And Fate we dared our hearts to sever,
For Youth and Love no danger know—
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago!
What pledges then to Life were given,
What dreams that into deeds should grow,
The great moon listening up in heaven
While we were whispering there below—
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago.
What dreams that into deeds should grow,
The great moon listening up in heaven
While we were whispering there below—
Ah me! 't is twenty years ago.
But Love and Youth and Fame and Glory,
So real then in Life's first glow,
Are now a dim remembered story
Of some divine and dreamlike show
That passed—some twenty years ago.
So real then in Life's first glow,
Are now a dim remembered story
Of some divine and dreamlike show
That passed—some twenty years ago.
237
And in these evenings of September
I pace the path with footsteps slow,
And sighing, dreaming, I remember
The sweetness gone from here below—
Ah me! some twenty years ago.
I pace the path with footsteps slow,
And sighing, dreaming, I remember
The sweetness gone from here below—
Ah me! some twenty years ago.
And half a dream and half ideal
On memory's magic glass you go,
While on your head, but scarcely real
There shines a faint auroral glow—
Ah me! of twenty years ago.
On memory's magic glass you go,
While on your head, but scarcely real
There shines a faint auroral glow—
Ah me! of twenty years ago.
| Poems by William Wetmore Story | |