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Title: An Epoch In A Sweet Life
Author: William Johnson Cory [
More Titles by Cory]
This sun, whose javelins strike and gild the wheat,
Who gives the nectarine half an orb of bloom,
Burns on my life no less, and beat by beat
Shapes that grave hour when boyhood hears her
doom.
Between this glow of pious eve and me,
Lost moments, thick as clouds of summer flies,
Specks of old time, which else one could not see,
Made manifest in the windless calm, arise.
Streaks fairy green are traced on backward ways,
Through vacant regions lightly overleapt,
With pauses, where in soft pathetic haze
Are phantoms of the joys that died unwept.
Seven years since one, who bore with me the yoke
Of household schooling, missed me from her side.
When called away from sorrowing woman folk
A prouder task with brothers twain I plied.
I came a child, and home was round me still,
No terror snapt the silken cord of trust;
My accents changed not, and the low "I will"
Silenced like halcyon plumes the loud "you must."
I lisped my Latin underneath the gloom
Of timbers dark as frowning usher's looks,
Where thought would stray beyond that sordid room
To saucy chessmen and to feathered hooks.
And soon I sat below my grandsire's bust,
Which in the school he loved not deigns to stand,
That Earl, who forced his compeers to be just,
And wrought in brave old age what youth had
planned.
But no ancestral majesties could fix
The wistful eye, which fell, and fondly read,
Fresh carven on the panel, letters six,
A brother's name, more sacred than the dead.
How far too sweet for school he seemed to me,
How ripe for combat with the wits of men,
How childlike in his manhood! Can it be?
Can I indeed be now what he was then?
He past from sight; my laughing life remained
Like merry waves that ripple to the bank,
Curved round the spot where longing eyes are strained,
Because beneath the lake a treasure sank.
Dear as the token of a loss to some,
And praised for likeness, this was well; and yet
'Twas better still that younger friends should come,
Whose love might grow entwined with no regret.
They came; and one was of a northern race,
Who bore the island galley on his shield,
Grand histories on his name, and in his face
A bright soul's ardour fearlessly revealed.
We trifled, toiled, and feasted, far apart
From churls, who wondered what our friendship
meant;
And in that coy retirement heart to heart
Drew closer, and our natures were content.
My noblest playmate lost, I still withdrew
From dull excitement which the Graces dread,
And talked in saunterings with the gentle few
Of tunes we practised, and of rhymes we read.
We swam through twilight waters, or we played
Like spellbound captives in the Naiad's grot;
Coquetted with the oar, and wooed the shade
On dainty banks of shy forget-me-not.
Oh Thames! my memories bloom with all thy flowers,
Thy kindness sighs to me from every tree:
Farewell I I thank thee for the frolic hours,
I bid thee, whilst thou flowest, speak of me.
July 28th, 1864.
[The end]
William Johnson Cory's poem: Epoch In A Sweet Life
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