Classic Poem

W HENE'ER I see, hurrying through worldly ways,
Those who forget the friends they once have known
Who seemed like very kinsmen of their own
For fond affection, merged now in the haze
That broods o'er the Eternal … the old days.
Faint too and far, like fairy tales outflown
From rooms of childhood,—I must inly moan
That Time such numbing power upon us lays.

As if the Past were not a playground, where
The unforgotten mates slip to and fro
In games whose dimness makes them doubly fair,
The heart's best comradery, when all is said;
As if less lovely were the Long Ago,
Or men could lose their dearness, being dead.