SONGS BY BARRY CORNWALL.
PAST TIMES.
Old Acquaintance, shall the nights
You and I once talked together,
Be forgot like common things,—
Like some dreary night that brings
Naught save foul weather?
We were young, when you and I
Talked of golden things together,—
Of love and rhyme, of books and men:
Ah! our hearts were buoyant then
As the wild-goose feather!
Twenty years have fled, we know,
Bringing care and changing weather;
But hath th' heart no backward flights,
That we again may see those nights,
And laugh together?
Jove's eagle, soaring to the sun,
Renews the past year's mouldering feather:
Ah, why not you and I, then, soar
From age to youth,—and dream once more
Long nights together.
THE STRANGER.
A stranger came to a rich man's door.
And smiled on his mighty feast;
And away his brightest child he bore,
And laid her toward the East.
He came next spring, with a smile as gay,
(At the time the East wind blows,)
And another bright creature he led away,
With a cheek like a burning rose.
And he came once more, when the spring was blue,
And whispered the last to rest,
And bore her away,—yet nobody knew
The name of the fearful guest!
Next year, there was none but the rich man left,—
Left alone in his pride and pain,
Who called on the stranger, like one bereft,
And sought through the land,—in vain!
He came not: he never was heard nor seen
Again; (so the story saith;)
But, wherever his terrible smile had been,
Men shuddered, and talked of—Death!
THE QUADROON.
Say they that all beauty lies
In the paler maiden's hue?
Say they that all softness flies,
Save from the eyes of April blue?
Arise then, like a night in June,
Beautiful Quadroon!
Come,—all dark and bright, as skies
With the tender starlight hung!
Loose the love from out thine eyes!
Loose the angel from thy tongue!
Let them hear heaven's own sweet tune,
Beautiful Quadroon!
Tell them—Beauty (born above)
From no shade nor hue doth fly:
All she asks is mind, is love:
And both upon thine aspect lie,—
Like the light upon the moon,
Beautiful Quadroon.
THE PAST.
This common field, this little brook—
What is there hidden in these two,
That I so often on them look,
Oftener than on the heavens blue?
No beauty lies upon the field;
Small music doth the river yield;
And yet I look and look again,
With something of a pleasant pain.
'Tis thirty—can't be thirty years,
Since last I stood upon this plank.
Which o'er the brook its figure rears,
And watch'd the pebbles as they sank?
How white the stream! I still remember
Its margin glassed by hoar December,
And how the sun fell on the snow:
Ah! can it be so long ago?
It cometh back;—so blithe, so bright,
It hurries to my eager ken.
As though but one short winter's night
Had darkened o'er the world since then.
It is the same clear dazzling scene;—
Perhaps the grass is scarce as green;
Perhaps the river's troubled voice
Doth not so plainly say—"Rejoice."
Yet Nature surely never ranges,
Ne'er quits her gay and flowery crown;—
But, ever joyful, merely changes
The primrose for the thistle-down.
'Tis we alone who, waxing old,
Look on her with an aspect cold,
Dissolve her in our burning tears,
Or clothe her with the mists of years!
Then, why should not the grass be green?
And why should not the river's song
Be merry,—as they both have been
When I was here an urchin strong?
Ah, true—too true! I see the sun
Through thirty winter years hath run.
For grave eyes, mirrored in the brook,
Usurp the urchin's laughing look!
So be it! I have lost,—and won!
For, once, the past was poor to me,—
The future dim: and though the sun
Shed life and strength, and I was free,
I felt not—knew no grateful pleasure:
All seemed but as the common measure:
But NOW—the experienced spirit old
Turns all the leaden past to gold.