The Oldest Inhabitant 5

Victorian Poetry by Augusta Webster

Ah! men might marvel to hear me say
The world of my youth is the world of to-day;
Here, in this very home of my birth,
How they would answer from some old book,
"Thus and thus was the past; now look,
Are we as they of the older earth,
We and our ways, and the fields we plough?"
And the first-met gossip who knows but Now
Counts chances a score in half a year,
Tells me this was that, and there was here,
A hall is burnt, a new market is made,
A railway runs where the school-boys played,
He is married, and he is dead,
And he so rich goes begging his bread;
"'Tis a world of change," he will soberly sigh
For point to his tales: why, and so say I;
Chances and changes enough, I deem,
In a world that goes on like a shifting dream;
But, oh, the long sameness! Ebb and flow:
Billows that come, and billows that go!
Nothing is but will drift away,
Nothing was but will come:
Future finds Past, old becomes new;
What men have done that they will do.
'Tis but the counting coins of to-day
To measure the former sum,
But the naming laterwise
Things and thoughts of an ancient guise:
And what change for me who see life as some star,
The expanses of earth in one from afar?
Hill grows valley and valley grows hills
'Tis a world of hills and valleys still.
 

Next page

I    II     III     IV     V     VI     VII
 

Home     A Bird And Flower     A Coarse Morning     A Comrade     A Song Of A Springtime     A Summer Mood     Autumn Warnings      Baby Eyes     Belated     Betrothed     Beyond The Shadow     Day Is Dead And Let Us Sleep     Dear Love, Goodnight     Dearest, This One Day we Own     Disenchanted     Farewell     Hark The Skylight In The Cloud     Her Memories     In After Years     Late Roses     Linnet And Lark     Miles And Miles     My Loss     News To The King     No News From The War     Not Love     Not To Be     Once A Sea Nymph Loved A Boy     Once     One Star Only For Love's Heaven     Poulain The Prisoner     Question And Answer     Seeds With Wings     Siste Viator     Spring And Summer      St.-Amé     Tell Me Not Of Morrows Sweet    Tell Thee Truth Sweet No    The Apple Orchard     The Bees In The Lime     The Bindweed     The Brambles     The Brook Rhine     The Butterfly     The Cornflower     The Daughter     The First Spring Day     The Flower By The Path     The Flowers to Come     The Flowing Tide     The Frozen River     The Graveyard     The Heart That Lacks Room     The Heather     The Holly     The Lovers     The Missing Star     The Nightingale     The Old Dream     The Old Love    The Pine     The Primrose     The Rivulet     The Sea-Maid's Song     The Skylark's Song     The Snows     The Storm     The Swallows     The Violet And The Rose     The Whisper     The Wind's Tidings     To-Day     Too Soon So Far, Fair Lillies     Waiting      We Two     Where Found Love His Yesterday     Where home Was     While The Woods Were Green     White Rose And Red     Young May

 

Find love online "UK Singles Club" dating services            Find a home in the sun at Spain - Spanish property