Poems Class of 29 (1851-1889) | Page 3

husband too!/
"And is there nothing yet unsaid,
Before the change appears?

Remember, all their gifts have fled
With those dissolving years."
"Why, yes;" for memory would recall
My fond paternal joys;
"I
could not bear to leave them all
I'll take--my--girl--and--boys."
The smiling angel dropped his pen,--
"Why, this will never do;
The
man would be a boy again,
And be a father too!"
And so I laughed,--my laughter woke
The household with its noise,--

And wrote my dream, when morning broke,
To please the
gray-haired boys.
REMEMBER--FORGET
1855
AND what shall be the song to-night,
If song there needs must be?

If every year that brings us here
Must steal an hour from me?
Say,

shall it ring a merry peal,
Or heave a mourning sigh
O'er shadows
cast, by years long past,
On moments flitting by?
Nay, take the first unbidden line
The idle hour may send,
No
studied grace can mend the face
That smiles as friend on friend;

The balsam oozes from the pine,
The sweetness from the rose,
And
so, unsought, a kindly thought
Finds language as it flows.
The years rush by in sounding flight,
I hear their ceaseless wings;

Their songs I hear, some far, some near,
And thus the burden rings

"The morn has fled, the noon has past,
The sun will soon be set,

The twilight fade to midnight shade;
Remember-and Forget!"
Remember all that time has brought--
The starry hope on high,
The
strength attained, the courage gained,
The love that cannot die.

Forget the bitter, brooding thought,--
The word too harshly said,

The living blame love hates to name,
The frailties of the dead!
We have been younger, so they say,
But let the seasons roll,
He
doth not lack an almanac
Whose youth is in his soul.
The snows
may clog life's iron track,
But does the axle tire,
While bearing
swift through bank and drift
The engine's heart of fire?
I lift a goblet in my hand;
If good old wine it hold,
An ancient skin
to keep it in
Is just the thing, we 're told.
We 're grayer than the
dusty flask,--
We 're older than our wine;
Our corks reveal the
"white top" seal,
The stamp of '29.
Ah, Boys! we clustered in the dawn,
To sever in the dark;
A merry
crew, with loud halloo,
We climbed our painted bark;

We sailed her
through the four years' cruise,
We 'll sail her to the last,
Our dear
old flag, though but a rag,
Still flying on her mast.
So gliding on, each winter's gale
Shall pipe us all on deck,
Till,

faint and few, the gathering crew
Creep o'er the parting wreck,
Her
sails and streamers spread aloft
To fortune's rain or shine,
Till storm
or sun shall all be one,
And down goes TWENTY-NINE!
OUR INDIAN SUMMER
1856
You 'll believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise,
With a welcome
like this in your darling old eyes;
To meet the same smiles and to
hear the same tone
Which have greeted me oft in the years that have
flown.
Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall,
My locks would turn
brown at the sight of you all;
If my heart were as dry as the shell on
the sand,
It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand.
There are noontides of autumn when summer returns.
Though the
leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns, And the bird on his
perch, that was silent so long,
Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks
into song.
We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June;
Their plumes
are still bright and their voices in tune;
One mcment of sunshine from
faces like these
And they sing as they sung in the green-growing
trees.
The voices of morning! how sweet is their thrill
When the shadows
have turned, and the evening grows still!
The text of our lives may
get wiser with age,
But the print was so fair on its twentieth page!
Look off from your goblet and up from your plate,
Come, take the
last journal, and glance at its date:
Then think what we fellows should
say and should do,
If the 6 were a 9 and the 5 were a 2.
Ah, no! for the shapes that would meet with as here,
From the far

land of shadows, are ever too dear!
Though youth flung around us its
pride and its charms,
We should see but the comrades we clasped in
our arms.
A health to our future--a sigh for our past,
We love, we remember, we
hope to the last;
And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold,

While we've youth in our hearts we can never grow old!
MARE RUBRUM
1858
FLASH out a stream of blood-red wine,
For I would drink to other
days,
And brighter shall their memory shine,
Seen flaming through
its crimson blaze!
The roses die, the summers fade,
But every ghost
of boyhood's dream
By nature's magic power is laid
To sleep
beneath this blood-red stream!
It filled the purple grapes that lay,
And drank the splendors of the sun,

Where the long summer's cloudless day
Is mirrored in the broad
Garonne;
It pictures still the bacchant shapes
That saw their
hoarded sunlight shed,--
The maidens dancing on the grapes,--

Their milk-white ankles splashed with red.
Beneath