Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES TO A DESERTED STUDY, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LINES TO A DESERTED STUDY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hush! Feel ye not around us teem
Last Line: Tread gently, we were flowers.
Subject(s): Aging; Life; Time; Youth


HUSH! Feel ye not around us teem
The shapes that haunted Goethe's dream?
When lifted genius mused apart,
And taste inspired the soul of art;
Young first Love, coy with trembling wings,
And Hope, the lark that soaring sings,
And boyhood friendships prone to fade
Through pleasant ones of sun and shade;
With many a phantom born of youth,
The trust in honor, faith, and truth
That fails in after years;
The perfect pearls of life's young dream
Dissolved in manhood's tears.
Through Time's swift loom our joys and griefs
In braided strands together run;
To weave about this world of ours
Wild tapestries of shade and sun.
And seems it not as if to-night,
Dear, dusty, many-memoried room,
Our souls had lost the threads of light,
And like the eve kept gathering gloom?
Ay, and for one of us the hour
Must have, methinks, a double power,
As backwards turns his saddened look,
To view again those many scenes,
When life was like an uncut book,
And Joy was in her rosy teens,
Yes, even we who later knew
The home of friendship and of taste,
Stand saddened by the parting view
Of scenes by recollection graced.
Ah, there the books looked meekly out
Above an alligator's snout;
And bugs and fossils, birds and bones,
Round-shouldered bottles, jars, and stones,
Stood up in order sage,—
Memorials they of every clime,
Remains of every age.
Oh, yes, 't was here at eventide
We lingered by the table's side,
While Wit her lightning stories told,
And through Havana's clouds of gold
The thunder-storm of laughter rolled,
Till Mirth her very contrast brought,
And drooped the brow in earnest thought;
While tranced we sat, as now we sit,
And fast the parting time draws near,
And these stained walls seem gathering grace
As if to grow more doubly dear;
And not an ink-mark on the boards
But wears a half-appealing look.
The mottled wall, the naked floor,
I read them as ye read a book,—
As if they something had to say,
And sought but could not find a way;
As often 'mid the waning year,
In brown-cheeked autumn's bowers,
The leaves ye tread seem rustling low,—
Tread gently, we were flowers.





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