THE OLD MAN RETURNED HOME.
Reading edition
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BY G. G. FOSTER.
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The dews fall softly from the dropping skies,
And winds are dallying with the wanton flowers,
That like young maidens in their coy retreats
Unveil their beauties for the spirit stars
Alone to gaze on.—Age, they say, dries up
The fountain of enthusiasm, and the hues
That morning sunlight pictures in the wave,
Shrink like scared spirits away beneath the disc
Of noontide sun, or evening’s cheerless beam.
Now, I have seen old Time’s retreating tide
Leave its white froth upon me—aye, gray hairs
Have sprung from out the furrows of my brain,
As weeds will grow upon the o’erwrought soil,
To tell me that I’m old—bid me put off
The misty mantle of life’s morning dreams,
And plod in dull indifference to the grave.
Why, ’tis a lie! I feel the air as fresh—
I scent the fragrance of this beauteous eve
As gratefully—I watch the paling moon
Stealing to her magnificent repose
Behind the starry curtains of the west,
With as unchanged and vigorous delight
As when, a boy, beside my own dear lake
I lay, and saw the same moon kiss the wave
That in strange music murmured out its joy.
The whippoorwill amid the hazel boughs
Sings his old tunes unchanged—as are the leaves
And skies and waves that echo it. ’Tis man,
And not man’s real nature, which dims o’er
The gold of feeling with pernicious rust,
Drawn, like the poison of the asp, from flowers
Which spring forever, would he cherish them,
Within his heart of hearts.
What! I grow old?
I haven’t felt so young for forty years!
And, were it not my mother’s hair is white—
My father dead, and all that’s human, changed—
I’d deem the past but as a school-boy’s dream
Over an ill-conned lesson—and awake
To the reality of living joy.