A Ballade of Old Sweethearts
(To M. C.)
Who is it that weeps for the last year’s flowers
When the wood is aflame with the fires of spring,
And we hear her voice in the lilac bowers
As she croons the runes of the blossoming?
For the same old blooms do the new years bring.
But not to our lives do the years come so,
New lips must kiss and new bosoms cling.—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
Ah! me for a breath of those morning hours
When Alice and I went awandering
Through the shining fields, and it still was ours
To kiss and to feel we were shuddering—
Ah! me, when a kiss was a holy thing.—
How sweet were a smile from Maud, and oh!
With Phyllis once more to be whispering.—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
But it cannot be that old Time devours
Such loves as was Annie’s and mine we sing,
And surely beneficent heavenly powers
Save Muriel’s beauty from perishing;
And if in some golden evening
To a quaint old garden I chance to go,
Shall Marion no more by the wicket sing?—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
In these lives of ours do the new years bring
Old loves as old flowers again to blow?
Or do new lips kiss and new bosoms cling?—
Ah! lost are the loves of the long ago.
R. Le Gallienne.