Thus float
My wandering thoughts, as on the balcony
I sit alone bathed in the moonlight pale,
And musing thus the scene changed suddenly:
Hotel and cottage vanished; to the shore
The prairie sloped a green unbroken floor.
Eight lustrums back, through rosy summers fled,
Adown a dwindling vista far I sped,
A careless youth; again my hoary head
Bloomed with the sunny wealth of twenty years.