Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 5/Souvenirs
SOUVENIRS.
I loved a lady fair of face,
A witching girl who made me wise;
I was a city drone, but Grace
Made me a poet with her eyes;
For Grace was sweet as sweet could be—
To me, at least, divinely fair:
And I believe I loved her—See!
This little curl of golden hair.
This curl upon her brow has gleamed
Beneath the sun’s alchemic touch;
But I, who stole it, little dream’d
That it could ever mean so much:
It summons back her lovely look,
The brow alive with thoughts untold,
The blushing laughter, when she shook
The sunshine from her locks of gold.
We played a little pleasing game,
A playful love, we knew not why:
I made acrostics on her name,
But came to kisses by-and-by.
This sleeping Cupid, red as wine,—
A quiver here, a spire beyond,—
She sent me as a Valentine,
And it reminds me we were fond.
And here,—a book of tender rhymes
That (for a wonder) time has kept:
I read it out a hundred times,
And marked some portions, where we wept:
A foolish volume it may be,
Yet o’er it she has laughed and grieved—
It says, we were so young, that we
Conferred the beauty we perceived.
Well, time passed on. Within, without,
My brain was hot, my face was fired;
We played our pretty folly out,
Till I grew bold and she grew tired;
Till I grew bold and she grew cold,
Forgetful what the years might bring—
We quarrelled, she not loath. Behold
This tiny, tarnish’d golden ring.
I bought the ring unknown to Grace,
A golden ring my love to crown,
And often, looking on her face,
Dreamed of a cottage out of town,—
A little garden, deaf to fame;
Till, blind with projects small and big,
Sure of its object, Love became
A gross ambition for a gig!
O, common folly, short and proud!
We quarrelled, parted, turning backs—
The gig came never from its cloud,
The cottage never felt a tax.
I bade, while brow and bosom burned,
A bitter truce to all my joys;
She married (well, they say), and learned
The knack of rearing girls and boys.
I keep the tokens I have shown,
And hold them very dear, in truth,—
Not for the single loss, I own,
But for the general loss of youth;
Love dies, but memories renew
The heart whose crust is hard and cold:
Romeo is young at forty-two,
And Juliet can ne’er be old!