Page:The Vow of the Peacock.pdf/15

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An old tree long cherished; a nursery song;— A walk slow and pleasant by field and by wood;— The winding 'mid water-plants of that clear flood, Where lilies, like fairy queens, looked on their glass,— That stream we so loved in our childhood to pass. Oh! world of sweet phantoms, how precious thou art! The past is perpetual youth to the heart. The past is the poet's,—that world is his own; Thence hath his music its truth and its tone. He calls up the shadows of ages long fled, And light, as life lovely, illumines the dead. And the beauty of time, with wild flowers and green, Shades and softens the world-worn, the harsh and the mean. He lives, he creates, in those long-vanished years— He asks of the present but audience and tears.