Poems (McDonald)/Early Days

by Mary Noel McDonald

EARLY DAYS.

Do you remember, Mary,
 All our happy childish days?
When our hearts were light and airy,
 And with footsteps like a fays
We bounded o'er the meadow,
 Or adown the wooded lane,
And plucked each summer blossom,
 And mocked the wild bird's strain?
When in that old fashioned garden
 We built our grotto fair,
With the shells that were so lovely,
 We were loth to leave them there?—
When we planted by the willow
 The hyacinth so blue,
And early left our pillow
 To watch how fast it grew?
Do you remember, Mary,
 Those happy, happy days;
When our hearts were light and airy,
 And our footsteps like a fays?

Do you remember ever
 Our happy girlhood hours,
When we wandered by the river,
 Or amid the forest bowers?
When we had so many secrets
 That were never to be told,
And we thought them quite as weighty
 As a miser's bag of gold?
When we conned our lessons over
 By the old laburnum tree,
With sweet summer sounds to lure us
 In the voice of bird and bee?

And our games upon the hill-side,
 On the green, or by the swing,
With Antoinette and Amy,
 Who were foremost in the ring?
Or our quarrel in the greenwood,
 Underneath the spreading vine,
Because a school-boy lover
 Preferred your eyes to mine?—
Do you remember, Mary,
 All those happy girlhood hours,
When our hearts were light and airy,
 And we trod a path of flowers?—
A path of thornless flowers,
 Beneath a smiling sky,
Nor dreamed in such fair bowers
 That care could ever lie.

And I hope you've not forgotten
 Our first and famous ball,
When we tripped it gay and lightly
 Through that antiquated hall;
When our mothers sat beside us,
 With a mother's partial eye,
And thought their girls the fairest,
 Though a thousand sylphs were by;
And we deemed that scene of pleasure,
 Was just what life would be,—
We have learned a harsher measure,
 And turned to grief from glee.
We have known the heart's deep sorrow,
 Since those happy days were past;
We have seen each coming morrow
 Look darker than the last;
We have wept in bitter anguish,
 And felt how sharp the sting,
When some fair, but fragile blossom,
 In our arms lay withering:
But we've garnered hopes immortal,
 That we knew not of before,
And yet have hours of gladness,
 Though our girlhood days are o'er.