After Many Days

Back in the dear old village,

    Again in the sleepy town.

O! that our hearts might pillage

    The pleasures that there o'er-drown

The soul till it knows no sorrow:

O! could our breasts but borrow

    The quiet of cap and gown.

O! for the tears and the laughter

    We mingled in days that are dead.

Joy that comes no more after;

    Tears that never are shed.

Then living was loving and pleasure,

And we drank it deep without measure,

    And the sob of our sorrow soon fled.

We are back in the peaceful quiet,

    Where we dreamed four years away;

Once more where Nature runs riot,

    And the pleasures of youth hold sway.

    O! take us and sing us to slumber

As of old, with delights without number,

    Which scatter your joyous way.

Edwin Osgood Grover

Index to poems in the collection by Edwin Osgood Grover