Nostalgia

Never such innocence again.

It takes a heap o’ livin’ in a house t’ make it home, A heap o’ sun an’ shadder, an’ ye sometimes have Afore ye really ’preciate the things ye lef’ behind, An’ hunger fer ’em somehow, with ’em allus on yer mind.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks Remind us of everything we have lost, For we have seen on our way and fallen in love With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old. 5

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story; The days of our youth are the days of our glory; And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.

Plain living and high thinking are no more: The homely beauty of the good old cause Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence, And pure religion breathing household laws.

True is it that we have seen better days.

I have come too late into a world too old. 1

Stands the church clock at ten to three? And is there honey still for tea?

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore— The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

Glimmering stars of the Great Bear, I never thought I’d be back to see you Shining down on my father’s garden, Nor talk to you ever again from the windows Of this house where I spent my childhood And saw the last of my happiness vanish.

Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story;

But where are the snows of yesteryear? 2

Back out of all this now too much for us, Back in a time made simple by the loss Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather, There is a house that is no more a house Upon a farm that is no more a farm And in a town that is no more a town.

First there’s the children’s house of make believe, Some shattered dishes underneath a pine, The playthings in the playhouse of the children. Weep for what little things could make them glad.

Somewhere beyond the curtain Of distorting days Lives that lonely thing That shone before these eyes Targeted, trod like Spring.

When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d, And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night, I mourn’d, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.

I find that the further I go back, the better things were, whether they happened or not.

I have had playmates, I have had companions, In my days of childhood, in my joyful school days— All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.

Are ye too changed, ye hills? See, ’tis no foot of unfamiliar men Tonight from Oxford up your pathway strays! Here came I often, often, in old days— Thyrsis [Arthur Hugh Clough] and I; we still had Thyrsis then.

The “good old times”—all times when old are good— Are gone.

Ye, fare wel al the snow of ferne yere! 6

That it will never come again Is what makes life so sweet.

Be it granted me to behold you again in dying, Hills of home!