The question’s very much too wide,
And much too deep, and much too hollow,
And learned men on either side
Use arguments I cannot follow.
They say that in the unchanging place,
Where all we loved is always dear,
We meet our morning face to face
And find at last our twentieth year....
They say (and I am glad they say)
It is so; and it may be so:
It may be just the other way,
I cannot tell. But this I know:
From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
. . . . . .
But something dwindles, oh! my peers,
And something cheats the heart and passes,
And Tom that meant to shake the years
Has come to merely rattling glasses.
And He, the Father of the Flock,
Is keeping Burmesans in order,
An exile on a lonely rock
That overlooks the Chinese border.
And One (Myself I mean—no less),
Ah!—will Posterity believe it—
Not only don’t deserve success,
But hasn’t managed to achieve it.
Not even this peculiar town
Has ever fixed a friendship firmer,
But—one is married, one’s gone down,
And one’s a Don, and one’s in Burmah.
. . . . . .
And oh! the days, the days, the days,
When all the four were off together:
The infinite deep of summer haze,
The roaring boast of autumn weather!
. . . . . .
I will not try the reach again,
I will not set my sail alone,
To moor a boat bereft of men
At Yarnton’s tiny docks of stone.
But I will sit beside the fire,
And put my hand before my eyes,
And trace, to fill my heart’s desire,
The last of all our Odysseys.
The quiet evening kept her tryst:
Beneath an open sky we rode,
And passed into a wandering mist
Along the perfect Evenlode.
The tender Evenlode that makes
Her meadows hush to hear the sound
Of waters mingling in the brakes,
And binds my heart to English ground.