As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone,
And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known,
So I turn the leaves of Fancy, till in shadowy designI find the smiling features of an old sweetheart of mine.
The lamplight seems to glimmer with a flicker of surprise,
As I turn it low, to rest me of the dazzle in my eyes,
And light my pipe in silence, save a sigh that seems to
Its fate with my tobacco, and to vanish with the smoke.'Tis a fragrant retrospection, for the loving thoughts that
Into being are like perfumes from the blossom of the heart;
And to dream the old dreams over is a luxury divine—When my truant fancies wander with that old sweetheart of mine.
Though I hear, beneath my study, like a fluttering of wings,
The voices of my children and the mother as she sings,
I feel no twinge of conscience to deny me any
When Care has cast her anchor in the harbor of a dream.
In fact, to speak in earnest,
I believe it adds a
To spice the good a trifle with a little dust of harm;
For I find an extra flavor in Memory's mellow
That makes me drink the deeper to that old sweetheart of mine.
A face of lily-beauty, with a form of airy grace,
Floats out of my tobacco as the genii from the vase;
And I thrill beneath the glances of a pair of azure eyes,
As glowing as the summer and as tender as the skies.
I can see the pink sunbonnet and the little checkered
She wore when first I kissed her, and she answered the
With the written declaration that, "as surely as the
Grew round the stump," she loved me,—that old sweetheart of mine!
And again I feel the pressure of her slender little hand,
As we used to talk together of the future we had planned:
When I should be a poet, and with nothing else to
But write the tender verses that she set the music to;
When we should live together in a cozy little cot,
Hid in a nest of roses, with a fairy garden-spot,
Where the vines were ever fruited, and the weather ever fine,
And the birds were ever singing for that old sweetheart of mine;
And I should be her lover forever and a day,
And she my faithful sweetheart till the golden hair was gray;
And we should be so happy that when either's lips were
They would not smile in heaven till the other's kiss had come.
But ah! my dream is broken by a step upon the stair,
And the door is softly opened, and my wife is standing there!
Yet with eagerness and rapture all my visions I
To greet the living presence of that old sweetheart of mine.
