Years of my boyhood! have you passed away?
Days of my youth and have you fled for ever?
Can I but joy when o’er my fancy stray
Scenes of young hope, which time has failed to sever
From this fond heart:—for, tho’ all else decay,
The memory of those times will perish never.—
Time cannot blight it, nor the tooth of care
Those wayward dreams of joyousness impair.
Still, with the bright May-dew, the grass is wet;
No human step the slumbering earth has prest:
Cheering as hope, the sun looks forth; and yet
There is a weight of sorrow on my breast:
Lite, light, and joy, his smiling beams beget,
But yield they aught, to soothe a mind distrest;
Can the heart, cross’d with cares, and born to sorrow,
From Nature’s smiles one ray of comfort borrow!
But I must sympathize with you in your reflections, amid those haunts which are endeared by many a tie, on the decay wrought by time and events. An old house is an old friend; a dingy “tenement” is a poor relation, who has seen better days; “it looks, as it would look its last,” on the surrounding innovations, and wakes feelings in my bosom which have no vent in words. Its “imbowed windows,” projecting each story beyond the other, go to disprove Bacon’s notion, that “houses are made to live in, and not to look on:” they give it a brow-beating air, though its days of “pomp and circumstance” are gone by, and have left us cheerlessly to muse and mourn over its ruins:—
Oh! I can gaze, and think it quite a treat,
So they be old, on buildings grim and shabby;
I love within the church’s walls to greet
Some “olde man” kneeling, bearded like a rabbi,
Who never prayed himself, but has a whim
That you’ll “orate,” that is—“praye” for him.
But this has introduced me to another and an equally pleasing employ; that of traversing the aisles of our country churches, and “meditating among the tombs.” I dare not go farther, for I am such an enthusiast, that I shall soon write down your patience.
You expressed a wish for my name and address, on the cover of your third part; I enclose them: but I desire to be known to the public by no other designation than my old one.
I am, dear sir,
Yours, &c.
Camberwell.
Lector.