Читать книгу The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Various - Страница 4

Those envious threads, what do they here,

    Amid thy flowing hair?

It should be many a summer’s day

    Ere they were planted there:

Yet many a day ere thou and Care

    Had known each other’s form,

Or thou hadst bent thy youthful head

    To Sorrow’s whelming storm.

Oh! was it grief that blanched the locks

    Thus early on thy brow?

And does the memory cloud thy heart,

    And dim thy spirit now?

Or are the words upon thy lip

    An echo from thy heart;

And is that gay as are the smiles

    With which thy full lips part?

For thou hast lived man’s life of thought,

    While careless youth was thine;

Thy boyish lip has passed the jest

    And sipped the sparkling wine,

And mingled in the heartless throng

    As thoughtlessly as they,

Ere yet the days of early youth

    Had glided swift away.

They say that Nature wooeth back

    No wanderer to her arms;

Welcomes no prodigal’s return

    Who once hath scorned her charms.

And ah! I fear for thee and me,

    The feelings of our youth

Have vanished with the things that were,

    Amid the wrecks of truth.

Oh! for the early happy days

    When hope at least was new!

Ere we had dreamed a thousand dreams,

    And found them all untrue;

Ere we had flung our life away

    On what might not be ours;

Found bitter drops in every cup,

    And thorns on all the flowers.

Ye who have yet youth’s sunny dreams,

    Oh guard the treasure well,

That no rude voice from coming years

    May break the enchanted spell!

No cloud of doubt come o’er your sky

    To dim its sunny ray,

Be careless children, while ye can,

    Trust on, while yet ye may.