Poems (Odom)/To Laura Durden
TO LAURA DURDEN.
It brings to my heart all the past, Laura, To look in your dear eyes again;The pleasures that never can last, Laura, The youth that we cling to in vain.The school-days so far, far away, Laura, The tasks we have learned side by side,The joys that we knew in that day, Laura, Have drifted away with the tide.
How well I remember the years, Laura, We passed in the old "college hall,"And look back through the fast-falling tears, Laura, On the days we can never recall.The bright sunny days that we knew, Laura, With never a shadow of woe;When the world seemed so fair and so true, Laura, Alas! that was long, long ago.
Your cheek, once so rounded and fair, Laura, So pallid and altered to-day; And silver is streaking the hair, Laura, That I brush from your temple away.I know 't is not time that has thrown, Laura, The moonlight of age on your hair;Your heart, all too early, has known, Laura, The wearisome burden of care.
The fortune that sadly has changed, Laura, The losses your life has sustained—The five hundred friends now estranged, Laura, Where few, oh! so few, have remained.But this is the way of the world, Laura, We know not what friendship is worth,Till Fortune her banner has furled, Laura, And Sorrow sits down at our hearth,
Yet still in your eyes I can see, Laura, The light I can never forget;And I know in your heart that for me, Laura, The old tender love lingers yet.And mine beats as warmly for you, Laura, As though we were both young again;I was one of the many you knew, Laura,— I am one of the few who remain.