If I knew what poets know,
I would find a theme
Sweeter than the placid flow
Of the fairest dream:
I would sing of love that lives
On the errors it forgives;
And the world would better grow
If I knew what poets know.
AN OLD SWEETHEART OF MINE
An old sweetheart of mine!—Is this her presence here with me,
Or but a vain creation of a lover's memory?
A fair, illusive vision that would vanish into air
Dared I even touch the silence with the whisper of a prayer?
Nay, let me then believe in all the blended false and true—
The semblance of the OLD love and the substance of the NEW,—
The THEN of changeless sunny days—the NOW of shower and shine—
But Love forever smiling—as that old sweetheart of mine.
This ever-restful sense of HOME, though shouts ring in the
hall.—
The easy chair—the old book-shelves and prints along the wall;
The rare HABANAS in their box, or gaunt church-warden-stem
That often wags, above the jar, derisively at them.
As one who cons at evening o'er an album, all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till, in shadowy design,
I find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low—to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to yoke
Its fate with my tobacco and to vanish with the smoke.
'Tis a FRAGRANT retrospection,—for the loving thoughts that
start
Into being are like perfume from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine—
When my truant fancies wander with that old sweetheart of mine.
Though I hear beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices of my children and the mother as she sings—
I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any theme
When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream—
In fact, to speak in earnest, I believe it adds a charm
To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm,—
For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow wine
That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine.