Like Eden round us; for the Future shone—
The sun to which each young heart turned for light!
What wild conceits of great, oracular lives,
Ourselves would equal! but let that go by:
Each has gone by, in turn, to humbler fates.
Sometimes we angled, and our trolling hooks
Swung the gray pickerel from his reedy shoals.
Beyond a horseshoe bend, the current’s force
Wore out a deeper channel, where the shore
Fell off, precipitous, on the western side.