Fly Leaves | Page 4

glade
Buoyant and blithe as other folk:
And not unfrequently I made
A joke.
A minstrel's fire within me burn'd,
I'd sing, as one whose heart must break,
Lay upon lay: I nearly learn'd

To shake.
All day I sang; of love, of fame,
Of fights our fathers fought of yore,
Until the thing almost became
A bore.
I cannot sing the old songs now!
It is not that I deem them low;
'Tis that I can't remember how
They go.
I could not range the hills till high
Above me stood the summer moon:
And as to dancing, I could fly
As soon.
The sports, to which with boyish glee
I sprang erewhile, attract no more;
Although I am but sixty-three
Or four.
Nay, worse than that, I've seem'd of late
To shrink from happy boyhood--boys
Have grown so noisy, and I
hate
A noise.
They fright me, when the beech is green,
By swarming up its stem for eggs:
They drive their horrid hoops
between
My legs:-
It's idle to repine, I know;
I'll tell you what I'll do instead:
I'll drink my arrowroot, and go
To bed.

FIRST LOVE.
O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow--or a
swift, or some bird -
Fly to her and say, I love her still?
Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:
Never, never--although three times
married -
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.
No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those "Lodgings with
an ample sea-view,"
Which were, forty years ago, "To Let."
There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,--who (so they say)
beholdest
Everything,--hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.
There she sat--so near me, yet remoter
Than a star--a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy
bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.
And I loved her, and our troth we plighted

On the morrow by the shingly shore:
In a fortnight to be disunited
By a bitter fate for evermore.
O my own, my beautiful, my blue eyed!
To be young once more, and bite my thumb
At the world and all its
cares with you, I'd
Give no inconsiderable sum.
Hand in hand we tramp'd the golden seaweed,
Soon as o'er the gray cliff peep'd the dawn:
Side by side, when came
the hour for tea, we'd
Crunch the mottled shrimp and hairy prawn:-
Has she wedded some gigantic shrimper,
That sweet mite with whom I loved to play?
Is she girt with babes
that whine and whimper,
That bright being who was always gay?
Yes--she has at least a dozen wee things!
Yes--I see her darning corduroys,
Scouring floors, and setting out the
tea-things,
For a howling herd of hungry boys,
In a home that reeks of tar and sperm-oil!
But at intervals she thinks, I know,
Of those days which we, afar
from turmoil,
Spent together forty years ago.

O my earliest love, still unforgotten,
With your downcast eyes of dreamy blue!
Never, somehow, could I
seem to cotton
To another as I did to you!
WANDERERS.
As o'er the hill we roam'd at will,
My dog and I together,
We mark'd a chaise, by two bright bays
Slow-moved along the heather:
Two bays arch neck'd, with tails erect
And gold upon their blinkers;
And by their side an ass I spied;
It was a travelling tinker's.
The chaise went by, nor aught cared I;
Such things are not in my way:
I turn'd me to the tinker, who
Was loafing down a by-way:
I ask'd him where he lived--a stare
Was all I got in answer,
As on he trudged: I rightly judged
The stare said, "Where I can, sir."
I ask'd him if he'd take a whiff
Of 'bacco; he acceded;
He grew communicative too,
(A pipe was all he needed,)
Till of the tinker's life, I think,

I knew as much as he did.
"I loiter down by thorp and town;
For any job I'm willing;
Take here and there a dusty brown,
And here and there a shilling.
"I deal in every ware in turn,
I've rings for buddin' Sally
That sparkle like those eyes of her'n;
I've liquor for the valet.
"I steal from th' parson's strawberry-plots,
I hide by th' squire's covers;
I teach the sweet young housemaids
what's
The art of trapping lovers.
"The things I've done 'neath moon and stars
Have got me into messes:
I've seen the sky through prison bars.
I've torn up prison dresses.
"I've sat, I've sigh'd, I've gloom'd, I've glanced
With envy at the swallows
That through the window slid, and danced
(Quite happy) round the gallows;
"But out again I come, and show
My face nor care a stiver
For trades are brisk and trades are slow,
But mine goes on for