Poems (Odom)/Youth Renewed
YOUTH RENEWED.
TO EDWIN PEALE AND WALTER DONAHUE ON THEIR TWENTY-FIRST BIRTHDAY.
Long years ago, in a classic hall, Two laughing girls, in careless glee,Drank lightly at the fount of youth, Their young hearts happy, gay, and free.They loved each other as we love The bosom friend of early youth;And time and distance only threw Upon their hearts the glow of truth.
The years passed on; their shadows fell But lightly on these girlish lives;And life was but a summer dream Until they both were happy wives.Then children came to fill their homes, To lean and cling about their knees,Their laughter ringing blithely out In gladness on the floating breeze.
Bright, joyous little ones, whose eyes Were brimming over with their mirth;Their childish voices prattling there, Made sweetest music round the hearth.Though since their girlhood, time had borne Their daily lives so far apart,The early love was still as strong; Each lived within the other's heart.
Then silently grief's shadows fell Like chilling clouds upon each breast;Their little children tired of earth, And one by one were laid to rest.They drifted from their mothers' arms, Far over death's relentless waves;The summer blossoms drooped their heads In sadness on their little graves.
And in these darkened homes that God, So sorely, sadly had bereft,The loss was strangely equal; for To each, one only child was left.And now those early friends have met, After the lapse of twenty years;Met when their lives have learned to know The chastening love of grief and tears.
And from the brows of both their boys The childish curls are brushed away,As strong in manly pride they stand— These two, just twenty-one to-day.Their mothers dwell together now, In all their olden love and truth;They watch their grown-up boys renew The friendship of their early youth.
God bless these honest-hearted boys, And make them worthy of the loveThat clings about their lives to-day, Like sunbeams from the world above.God speed them in the path of life, Whose journey they have but begun;May all its coming years be bright As this that greets the twenty-one.