| |
| THE PINES were dark on Ramoth hill, | |
| Their song was soft and low; | |
| The blossoms in the sweet May wind | |
| Were falling like the snow. | |
| |
| The blossoms drifted at our feet, | 5 |
| The orchard birds sang clear; | |
| The sweetest and the saddest day | |
| It seem’d of all the year. | |
| |
| For, more to me than birds or flowers, | |
| My playmate left her home, | 10 |
| And took with her the laughing spring, | |
| The music and the bloom. | |
| |
| She kiss’d the lips of kith and kin, | |
| She laid her hand in mine: | |
| What more could ask the bashful boy | 15 |
| Who fed her father’s kine? | |
| |
| She left us in the bloom of May: | |
| The constant years told o’er | |
| Their seasons with as sweet May morns, | |
| But she came back no more. | 20 |
| |
| I walk, with noiseless feet, the round | |
| Of uneventful years; | |
| Still o’er and o’er I sow the spring | |
| And reap the autumn ears. | |
| |
| She lives where all the golden year | 25 |
| Her summer roses blow; | |
| The dusky children of the sun | |
| Before her come and go. | |
| |
| There haply with her jewell’d hands | |
| She smooths her silken gown,— | 30 |
| No more the homespun lap wherein | |
| I shook the walnuts down. | |
| |
| The wild grapes wait us by the brook, | |
| The brown nuts on the hill, | |
| And still the May-day flowers make sweet | 35 |
| The woods of Follymill. | |
| |
| The lilies blossom in the pond, | |
| The bird builds in the tree, | |
| The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill | |
| The slow song of the sea. | 40 |
| |
| I wonder if she thinks of them, | |
| And how the old time seems,— | |
| If ever the pines of Ramoth wood | |
| Are sounding in her dreams. | |
| |
| I see her face, I hear her voice; | 45 |
| Does she remember mine? | |
| And what to her is now the boy | |
| Who fed her father’s kine? | |
| |
| What cares she that the orioles build | |
| For other eyes than ours,— | 50 |
| That other hands with nuts are fill’d, | |
| And other laps with flowers? | |
| |
| O playmate in the golden time! | |
| Our mossy seat is green, | |
| Its fringing violets blossom yet, | 55 |
| The old trees o’er it lean. | |
| |
| The winds so sweet with birch and fern | |
| A sweeter memory blow; | |
| And there in spring the veeries sing | |
| The song of long ago. | 60 |
| |
| And still the pines of Ramoth wood | |
| Are moaning like the sea,— | |
| The moaning of the sea of change | |
| Between myself and thee! | |
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