Chapter IV

Our love kept warm until our school-day-sun
Had set; and afterwards the smouldering fires
Were fed by letters, and rekindl’d oft
By friction of a frequent intercourse
Through visits in vacations; then, for years,
Behind it there was left a lingering light
Pervading moods of memory like the rays
Pour’d through a prism, wherein the commonest hues
Will spray to uncommon colors when they break.
In truth, I never see to-day a face
Where flash the kindling feelings of a boy,
But back of it, I seem to feel the warmth
Of Elbert’s heart. No school-boy past me bounds
But his dear presence comes to leap the years,
And rush on recollection, with a force
That brings from depths of joy, still’d long ago,
A spray as fresh as dash’d from them when first
They stream’d in cataracts. With love like his
To flood its brim, my soul appear’d so full
That, overflowing at each human touch,
Its pleasures could not stagnate.
But, you know
How fly the clouds above us, and in drought
The old springs fail; and long we liv’d apart.