Contents -Volume INDEX -AUTHOR INDEX -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. IX–XI: Literature of the Republic, Part IV., 1861–1889

Alice

By Charles Taber Congdon (1821–1891)

SOMETIMES in my motley dream I see

You, Alice,

Standing ’neath the old ancestral tree,

Waiting like a flower of flowers for me,

For me—Alice.

Yes, I dream with spirit quenched and hoary

Of you, Alice:

Trysting trees tell aye the self-same story,

You flew off—my guide and grace and glory—

From me, Alice.

We were very wise and constant then,

Both we, Alice:

How we laughed at old proverbial men!

How the merry meadows echoed when

You, Alice…!

I’d not live that summer day, again,

For you, Alice!

Would the Gods had spared to me the pain

Of knowing how a love could wax and wane,

Like yours, Alice.

Yet I’d something give, an old man’s whim,

If I, Alice,

With these eyes, a little bleared and dim,

Could see you waiting like a flower for him—

Not me, Alice.