Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/141

THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW Shakes on the rocks and fragrant ferns, and the berry-bushes around;

And I watch, as of old, the cattle graze in the lower pasture-ground.

Of the Saxon months of blossom, when the merle and mavis sing,

And a dust of gold falls everywhere from the soft midsummer's wing,

I only know from my poets, or from pictures that hither come,

Sweet with the smile of the hawthorn-hedge and the scent of the harvest-home.

But July in our own New England—I bask myself in its prime,

As one in the light of a face he loves, and has not seen for a time!

Again the perfect blue of the sky; the fresh green woods; the call

Of the crested jay; the tangled vines that cover the frost-thrown wall:

Sounds and shadows remembered well! the ground-bee's droning hum;

The distant musical tree-tops; the locust beating his drum;

And the ripened July warmth, that seems akin to a fire which stole,

Long summers since, through the thews of youth, to soften and harden my soul.

Here it was that I loved her—as only a stripling can,

Who dotes on a girl that others know no mate for the future man;

It was well, perhaps, that at last my pride and honor outgrew her art,

That there came an hour, when from broken chains I fled—with a broken heart.

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