DO YOU REMEMBER?

DO you remember the drive we took,
    Years ago, in the early fall,
When the moonlight lay like the visible look
    Of God, deep brooding over all?

The prairie had broken into bloom

    Of golden-rod, like a web unrolled,
And there wasn’t a tree to cast its gloom
    Over all that lustrous sweep of gold.

Never a house for miles and miles
    Save our airy castles’ columns and towers,

That rose in dimly magnificent piles
    Above a foundation of moonlit flowers.

We talked of our hopes and dreams, of how hard
    It was to live at the ideal height,
And our future was just as thickly starred

    As the sky above us that shining night. [Page 56]

Miles and miles through the loneliness,
    A boy and a girl and a slow, slow steed,
The young hearts fluttering to express
    Their highest thought and their deepest need.

No hill of hardship, no vale of despair,
    But a golden plain and a golden sky.
We felt that life was thrillingly fair,
    And cared not to ask the reason why.

Ever so long ago, and we—

    How have we drifted each from each!
The road to the height where we longed to be
    Is all untraversed by smile or speech.

But still you remember that vanished year
    When we rode alone in the smile of God,

And all of our wealth on this mortal sphere
    Was poetry, youth and golden-rod. [Page 57]