Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/143

THE OLD LOVE AND THE NEW From under their long black lashes new eyes—half-blue, half-gray—

Pierce through my soul, to drive the ghost of the old love quite away.

Shadow of years! at last it sinks in the sepulchre of the past,—

A gentle image and fair to see; but was my passion so vast?

"For you," I said, "be you false or true, are ever life of my life!"

Was it myself or another who spoke, and asked her to be his wife?

For here, on the dear old hillside, I lie at rest again,

And think with a quiet self-content of all the passion and pain,

Of the strong resolve and the after-strife; but the vistas round me seem

So little changed that I hardly know if the past is not a dream.

Can I have sailed, for seven years, far out in the open world;

Have tacked and drifted here and there, by eddying currents whirled;

Have gained and lost, and found again; and now, for a respite, come

Once more to the happy scenes of old, and the haven I voyaged from?

Blended, infinite murmurs of True Love's earliest song,

Where are you slumbering out of the heart that gave you echoes so long?

But chords that have ceased to vibrate the swell of an ancient strain

May thrill with a soulful music when rightly touched again.

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