An Old Sweetheart of Mine

Drawings by Howard Chandler Christy Decorations by Virginia Keep The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers Indianapolis Copyright, 1888-1899-1902 James Whitcomb Riley Copyright, 1902 The Bowen-Merrill Company
The beginning of whose steadfast friendship was marked by the first publication of these verses which now, expanded by writer, honored by publisher and masterfully graced by artist, seem to be a worthier symbol of the author's grateful and affectionate regard for his earliest friend
The ordered intermingling of the real and the dream,— The mill above the river, and the mist above the stream; The life of ceaseless labor, brave with song and cheery call— The radiant skies of evening, with its rainbow o'er us all.
An Old Sweetheart of Mine!—Is this her presence here with me, Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?
Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true— The semblance of the old love and the substance of the new ,—
The then of changeless sunny days— the now of shower and shine— But Love forever smiling,— as that old sweetheart of mine.
This ever-restful sense of home , though shouts ring in the hall.— The easy-chair—the old bookshelves and prints along the wall;
The rare Habanas in their box, or gaunt churchwarden-stem That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.
As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till, in shadowy design, I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise, As I turn it low—to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,