He sought the old scenes with eager feet -- The scenes he had known as a boy; "Oh, for a draught of those fountains sweet, And a taste of that vanished joy!" He roamed the fields, he wooed the streams, His schoolboy paths essayed to trace; The orchard ways recalled his dreams, The hills were like his mother's face. O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth! In sorrow he learned this truth -- One may return to the place of his birth, He cannot go back to his youth. |