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Oliver Wendell Holmes - Our Indian Summer

2014-11-10 4 Dailymotion

You 'll believe me, dear boys, 't is a pleasure to rise, <br />With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes; <br />To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone <br />Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. <br /> <br />Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, <br />My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all; <br />If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, <br />It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand. <br /> <br />There are noontides of autumn when summer returns. <br />Though the leaves are all garnered and sealed in their urns, <br />And the bird on his perch, that was silent so long, <br />Believes the sweet sunshine and breaks into song. <br /> <br />We have caged the young birds of our beautiful June; <br />Their plumes are still bright and their voices in tune; <br />One moment of sunshine from faces like these <br />And they sing as they sung in the green-growing trees. <br /> <br />The voices of morning! how sweet is their thrill <br />When the shadows have turned, and the evening grows still! <br />The text of our lives may get wiser with age, <br />But the print was so fair on its twentieth page! <br /> <br />Look off from your goblet and up from your plate, <br />Come, take the last journal, and glance at its date: <br />Then think what we fellows should say and should do, <br />If the 6 were a 9 and the 5 were a 2. <br /> <br />Ah, no! for the shapes that would meet with as here, <br />From the far land of shadows, are ever too dear! <br />Though youth flung around us its pride and its charms, <br />We should see but the comrades we clasped in our arms. <br /> <br />A health to our future--a sigh for our past, <br />We love, we remember, we hope to the last; <br />And for all the base lies that the almanacs hold, <br />While we've youth in our hearts we can never grow old!<br /><br />Oliver Wendell Holmes<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/our-indian-summer/

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