Classic Poem

O, for the days of youth again,
The days of peace and plenty,
Before I left my father's house,
When I was one and twenty.

When, on the grass-plot by the door,
I sported with the spaniel,
And life went merry as a brook
Along its stony channel.

But now to me the times are changed,
And I am sad and weary;
I've proved the world, the smiling world,
And found it cold and dreary.

I've wandered far upon the land,
And far upon the ocean,
When the dark waves were temptest-tossed
In fierce and wild commotion.

I've climbed the Andes' rocky heights
And viewed the realms below me,
And mused upon the loveliest scenes
Those lofty heights could show me.

I've passed to earth's remotest isles
Across the mighty waters;
I've greeted Asia's wildest sons,
And seen her fairest daughters.

When we had spread our swelling sail,
And homeward were returning,
The light of hope within my breast,
Was warm and brightly burning.

I clomb the mast, I strained my eye,
To catch the distant landing,
The misty mountain and the wood,
Upon its summit standing.

And when they met my sight at dawn,
What pleasures thrilled my bosom;
Gay-colored woods before me lay,
Like one unbounded blossom.

And I have reached my childhood's home
And found it all deserted;
Have wept beside its roofless walls
Like one that's broken hearted.

'Tis fourteen summers since I left
The birth-place of my fathers,
Where now his wreath of wilding flowers
The truant school-boy gathers.

The wild brier and the cherry tree
Grow in the ruined cellar,
And in its wall the cricket chirps,
A solitary dweller.

'Tis noon, calm noon — the yellow woods
In Autumn light are sleeping;
As if for playmates passed away,
Yon little brook is weeping.

All, all is changed, save the brown hills, —
They hold their wonted station;
But in my aching bosom reigns
A deeper desolation.

O God! I live without a friend,
A dreary world before me;
My parents' eyes are closed in death,
That bent so kindly o'er me.

My hair is grey — 'tis early grey —
'Tis grey with toil and sorrow;
My cheek is hollow, and my brow
Is ploughed with many a furrow.

Twilight is deepening, and the hills
Look distant, dim, and sober;
I'm sitting by my ruined home
In bleak and brown October.

All sounds of day have left the air,
The grass with frost is hoary,
And I have staid alone to write
This brief but rueful story; —

Staid, till the winds have chilled my blood,
On these dim hills benighted;
Staid, but no friend my coming waits,
No hearth for me is lighted.