A Poet's Harvest Home Being One Hundred Short Poems: By William Bell Scott ... With an Aftermath of Twenty Short Poems |
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 | A Poet's Harvest Home |  |
51
II.
I would indeed like well to see
What Matilda thinks, or thought of me
In that romantic early year
When her fine name I held so dear,
Or at least made it so appear
In my long-hid first verses book:
I'll try to wile her out to look
At the sundial or the bees,
And underneath the quivering trees
I shall touch on ancient things,
That so long since lost all their wings,
Or rather, to tell truth, I'd say,
Used them long since to fly away.
I did at once, and I must own
A faintly sentimental tone
Stole o'er my reminiscences,
As we passed, repassed the bees:
I said her child recalled her so,—
Revived in me the long ago—
The age was just about the same
When we once played a charming game,
Now quite gone out, upon the grass;
And here again the bees we pass;
Though she forgets to turn her head,
She answers in a cheerful mood,
Her daughter is both fair and good.
The gravel crunched beneath her tread
While she went on, and thus she said:
What Matilda thinks, or thought of me
In that romantic early year
When her fine name I held so dear,
Or at least made it so appear
In my long-hid first verses book:
I'll try to wile her out to look
At the sundial or the bees,
And underneath the quivering trees
I shall touch on ancient things,
That so long since lost all their wings,
Or rather, to tell truth, I'd say,
Used them long since to fly away.
I did at once, and I must own
A faintly sentimental tone
Stole o'er my reminiscences,
As we passed, repassed the bees:
I said her child recalled her so,—
Revived in me the long ago—
The age was just about the same
When we once played a charming game,
52
And here again the bees we pass;
Though she forgets to turn her head,
She answers in a cheerful mood,
Her daughter is both fair and good.
The gravel crunched beneath her tread
While she went on, and thus she said:
‘Your memory's good for long ago,
I often wish that mine were so,
But when a girl is wed like me,
And carried quite away to town,
The rest soon fades away, you see:
The birds gone, soon the nest blows down:
Your brother James, now gone, and I
Had some flirtations certainly,
He was the red-haired one and tall:—
I can't remember you at all!’
I often wish that mine were so,
But when a girl is wed like me,
And carried quite away to town,
The rest soon fades away, you see:
The birds gone, soon the nest blows down:
Your brother James, now gone, and I
Had some flirtations certainly,
He was the red-haired one and tall:—
I can't remember you at all!’
I made reply, some sidelong mutter;
We turned, we joined the rest at tea,
She ate three folds of bread and butter,
She had never thought at all of me!
We turned, we joined the rest at tea,
She ate three folds of bread and butter,
She had never thought at all of me!
| A Poet's Harvest Home | |