Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Second Book of Modern Verse. 1922.

Fifty Years Spent

FIFTY years spent before I found me,

Wind on my mouth and the taste of the rain,

Where the great hills circled and swept around me

And the torrents leapt to the mist-drenched plain;

Ah, it was long this coming of me

Back to the hills and the sounding sea.

Ye who can go when so it tideth

To fallow fields when the Spring is new,

Finding the spirit that there abideth,

Taking fill of the sun and the dew;

Little ye know of the cross of the town

And the small pale folk who go up and down.

Fifty years spent before I found me

A bank knee-deep with climbing rose,

Saw, or had space to look around me,

Knew how the apple buds and blows;

And all the while that I thought me wise

I walked as one with blinded eyes.

Scarcely a lad who passes twenty

But finds him a girl to balm his heart;

Only I, who had work so plenty,

Bade this loving keep apart:

Once I saw a girl in a crowd,

But I hushed my heart when it cried out aloud.

City courts in January,—

City courts in wilted June,

Often ye will catch and carry

Echoes of some straying tune;

Ah, but underneath the feet

Echo stifles in a street.

Fifty years spent, and what do they bring me?

Now I can buy the meadow and hill:

Where is the heart of the boy to sing thee?

Where is the life for thy living to fill?

And thirty years back in a city crowd

I passed a girl when my heart cried loud!