Oh, if billows and pillows and hours and flowers,
And all the brave rhymes of an elder day,
Could be furled together, this genial weather,
And carted or carried in wafts away,
Nor ever again trotted out—ay me!
How much fewer volumes of verse there'd be!
VISIONS
From 'Fly-Leaves'
"She was a phantom—" etc.
In lone Glenartney's thickets lies couched the lordly stag,
The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag;
And plodding plowmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker,
As broadening casements light them on toward home, or home-brewed liquor.
It is—in brief—the evening: that pure and pleasant time,
When stars break into splendor, and poets into rhyme;
When in the glass of Memory the forms of loved ones shine—
And when, of course, Miss Goodchild is prominent in mine.
Miss Goodchild—Julia Goodchild!—how graciously you smiled
Upon my childish passion once, yourself a fair-haired child:
When I was (no doubt) profiting by Dr. Crabb's instruction,
And sent those streaky lollipops home for your fairy suction.
"She wore" her natural "roses, the night when first we met,"—
Her golden hair was gleaming neath the coercive net:
"Her brow was like the snawdrift," her step was like Queen Mab's,
And gone was instantly the heart of every boy at Crabb's.
The parlor-boarder chasséed tow'rds her on graceful limb;
The onyx decked his bosom—but her smiles were not for him:
With me she danced—till drowsily her eyes "began to blink,"
And I brought raisin wine, and said, "Drink, pretty creature, drink!"