TWENTY GOLDEN YEARS AGO.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 122, 27 August 1875, Page 6

TWENTY GOLDEN YEARS AGO.

BY JAMES CLAItEXCE HAJfCrAN.

O, the rain, the weary, dreary rain, How it plashes on the window sill ! Night, I guess too, must be on the waric Strass and gass* arc grown so still. Here I sit, with coffee in my cvp — Ah ! 'twas rarely I beheld it flow In the tavern where I loved to sup Twenty golden years ago ! Twenty yeai s ago, alas ! — but stay — On my life, 'tis half-past twelve o'clock ! After all the hours do slip away — Come, here goes to burn another block ! For the night, or morn, is wet and cold ; And my fire is dwindling rather low :—: — I had fire enough, when young and bold Twenty golden years ago. Dear ! I don't feel well at all, somehow : Tew in Weimar dream how bad I am ; Floods of tears grow common with me now, High-Dutch iloods, that Reason cannot dam. Doctors think I'll neither live nor thrive If I mope at home so— l don't know — Am I living now ? I loas alive > Twenty golden years ago. Wifeless, friendless, flagonless, alone, Not quite bookless, though, unless I choose, Loft with nought to do, except to groan, Not a soul to woo, except to muse — Oh ! this is hard for me to bear, Me, who whilome livtd so much en haul, Me, who broke all hearts like china-ware, Twenty golden years ago ! Perhaps 'tis better ; — time's defacing wares, Long have quenched the radiance of my brow — They who curse me nightly from their graves, Scarce could love me were they living now ; But my loneliness hath darker ills — Such duns as Conscience, Thought, and Co., Awful G-orgons ! worse than tailors' bills Twenty golden years ago ! Did I paint a fifth of what I feel, 0 ! how plaintive you'would ween I was ! 8..t I wont, albeit I have a deal More to wail about than Kernel* has ! • Kerncr's tears are wept for withered flowers, Mine for withered hopes, my scroll of woo Dates, alas ! from youth's deserted bowers, Twenty golden years ago ! Yet, may Deutschland's bardlings flourish long, Me, I tweak no beak among them ; hawks Must not pounce on hawks : beside in song 1 could once beat all of them by chalks. Though you find me as I near my goal, Sentimentalising like Rousseau, O ! I hud a grand .Byron ian soul Twenty golden years ago ! Tick-tick, tick-tick ! — not a sound save Time's, And the windgust as it drives the rain — Tortured torturer of reluctant rhymes, Go to bod, and test thine aching biain ! Sleep! — no more the dupe of hopes or schemes ; Soon thou sleepest where the thistles blow — Curious anticlimax to thy dreams Twenty golden years ago ! '".Street ami lane.