TO J. F. H.

———

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

———

Nine years have slipped like hourglass-sand

From life’s fast-emptying globe away,

Since last, dear friend, I clasped your hand,

And lingered on the impoverished land,

Watching the steamer down the bay.

I held the keepsake which you gave,

Until the dim smoke-pennon curled

O’er the vague rim ’tween sky and wave,

And closed the distance like a grave,

Leaving me to the outer world;

The old worn world of hurry and heat,

The young, fresh world of thought and scope;

While you, where silent surges fleet

Tow’rd far sky-beaches still and sweet,

Sunk wavering down the ocean-slope;

Come back our ancient walks to tread,

Old haunts of lost or scattered friends,

Amid the Muses’ factories red,

Where song, and smoke, and laughter sped

The nights to proctor-haunted ends.

Our old familiars are not laid,

Though snapped our wands and sunk our books,

They beckon, not to be gainsaid,

Where, round broad meads which mowers wade,

Smooth Charles his steel-blue sickle crooks;

Where, as the cloudbergs eastward blow,

From glow to gloom the hill-side shifts

Its lakes of rye that surge and flow,

Its plumps of orchard-trees arow,

Its snowy white-weed’s summer drifts.

Or let us to Nantasket, there

To wander idly as we list,

Whether, on rocky hillocks bare,

Sharp cedar-points, like breakers, tear

The trailing fringes of gray mist,

Or whether, under skies clear-blown,

The heightening surfs with foamy din,

Their breeze-caught forelocks backward blown

Against old Neptune’s yellow zone,

Curl slow, and plunge forever in.

For years thrice three, wise Horace said,

A poem rare let silence bind;

And love may ripen in the shade,

Like ours, for nine long seasons laid

In crypts and arches of the mind.

That right Falernian friendship old

Will we, to grace our feast, call up,

And freely pour the juice of gold,

That keeps life’s pulses warm and bold,

Till Death shall break the empty cup.