ARCADIA REDIVIVA.
I, walking the familiar street,
While a crammed horse-car jingled through it,
Was lifted from my prosy feet
And in Arcadia ere I knew it.
Fresh sward for gravel soothed my tread,
And shepherd’s pipes my ear delighted;
The riddle may be lightly read:
I met two lovers newly plighted.
They murmured by in happy care,
New plans for paradise devising,
Just as the moon, with pensive stare,
O’er Mistress Craigie’s pines was rising.
Astarte, known nigh threescore years,
Me to no speechless rapture urges;
Them in Elysium she enspheres,
Queen, from of old, of thaumaturges.
The railings put forth bud and bloom,
The house-fronts all with myrtles twine them,
And light-winged Loves in every room
Make nests, and then with kisses line them.
O sweetness of untasted life!
O dream, its own supreme fulfilment!
O hours with all illusion rife,
As ere the heart divined what ill meant!
“Et ego,” sighed I to myself,
And strove some vain regrets to bridle,
“Though now laid dusty on the shelf,
Was hero once of such an idyl!
“An idyl ever newly sweet,
Although since Adam’s day recited,
Whose measures time them to Love’s feet,
Whose sense is every ill requited.”
Maiden, if I may counsel, drain
Each drop of this enchanted season,
For even our honeymoons must wane,
Convicted of green cheese by Reason.