Poems (Douglas)/Reminiscences
Reminiscences.
My dream it was of other hours, When life, and love, and hope were young,Ere I had left my native bowers, Or heard aught but my native tongue;Or ere a sorrow cloud o'erspread My young horizon, bright and clear,Or ere my eye had learned to shed The bitter and the burning tear.
Methought I joyous stood once more With those, the friends of love and truth;I mingled, as in days of yore, With the companions of my youth.Through fair and fertile garden ground Methought we wander'd hand in hand,We trod the valleys that surround My native home, in Erin's land.
O'er upland glens and sunny braes, We rambled in our boundless glee,As we were wont in youthful days, When every heart bent light and free; And from the margin of a stream, Soft quiv'ring to the gentle breeze—Now dancing in the sunny beam, Now dark'ning 'neath o'er-arehing trees;
Now gliding on its level course, O'er sanded bottom, smooth and grey;Then murm'ring, angry-like, and hoarse, When jutting rocks impede its way—We gathered flowers of various hues, And wove festoons to deck our hair,For bounteous Nature, all profuse, Display'd her sweetest colours there.
We lingered long by that bright stream, It seem'd a chosen fairy spot,And each presented, in my dream, To me the flower, "Forget-me-not."And one was there, a fair young boy, With gentle brow and sunny hair,Whose very smile imparted joy— Yes, he, methought—he, too, was there.
I heard his voice—long silent now— And felt the magic of his smile,And gazed upon his joyous brow, And, oh! my heart felt glad the while.And then, when evening shades stole on, We gathered round the cheerful hearth,And many a youthful voice, now gone, Joined in our guileless, boundless mirth.
'Twas love and friendship forged each link, Which seemed to clasp us heart to heart;Then I awoke, and wept to think That scenes so fair should e'er depart.Where are they now, those friends of truth, Companions of life's early morn?Like dreams that gild a poet's youth, They're vanished, never to return!
Gone! they are gone, just like the light With which the sunset-rays illumeThe western wave, ere sombre night Has buried all in shade and gloom.Yet recollection oft recalls Those hallowed phantoms of the past;E'en now, through memory's lonely halls, They flit just as I saw them last.