Page:Poems Toke.djvu/86

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LINES.

AM here in thine own old home again,
And with mingled feelings of joy and pain
I gaze once more on each time-worn tree,
Each spot which last I beheld with thee.
They are all unaltered and lovely still;
In wood and valley, on lake and hill,
The forms and colourings meet my gaze
Thou wert wont to love in former days:
And all is unchanged we used to see,
Save where, on many a time-worn tree,
The ivy has flung its unfading wreath,
To hide the wreck Time has wrought beneath:
Or where, like all perishing things of earth,
Laid low in the dust which first gave it birth,
Some lord of the forest's majestic form
Has bowed at last to the wintry storm;
Though many a blast it had braved before,
'Tis fallen now, and to rise no more:
Yet all is the same, and all speaks of thee;
The hills, the waters—each shadowing tree
Seems like a link in memory's chain,
And calls back thine image, thy voice again.

I stand on the sloping and verdant shore,
And gaze on the woods and waves once more;