Nostalgia

Non sum qualis eram bonae

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

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, Shaped to the comfort of the last to go As if to win them back.

Never such innocence again.

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.

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

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.

It was the last nostalgia: that he Should understand.

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.

Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say; Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have looked into the eye of day; The second best’s a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.

Red Rose, proud Rose, sad Rose of all my days! Come near me, while I sing the ancient ways.

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

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; Through all my tasks it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

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

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.

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o’ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

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

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 have come too late into a world too old. 1

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.

Asleep in lap of legends old.

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