RETROSPECTIVE.

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I'm free from the city's noises now,
And the city cares that bound me;
I chase their shadows off my brow,
'Mid the rural scenes around me.

And alone in the shadowy evening light,
In the deepening gloom and sadness,
I roam the paths of past delight
Of youth's wild dream of gladness.

I see the panorama vast
That to these eyes is giving
The joyous scenes of that dead past
Still in my bosom living.

I call those thoughts and memories back
That stern-faced Toil has banished,
And wander o'er the beaten track
Of happy days long vanished.

The friends of youth for whom I sigh—
The true and tender-hearted;
The happiness of days gone by,
The pleasures long departed:

I see them all again to-night,
They seem to come and linger
Like pictures traced in truest light
By Memory's artist finger.

Those happy times, to me how dear!
Well loved, yet lost for ever;
Those forms that I can fancy near,
Can they return? Ah, never!

Grim Time's dark shadow of decay
Falls on our hopes when brightest;
A cloud may dim our sky of May
When happy hearts beat lightest.

When golden sunbeams softly fall
In light on shrub and flower,
E'en then a storm to blight them all
May in the distance lour!

But still when evening's shadowy light
Steals round in gloom and sadness,
I'll feel a thrill of old delight,
Of youth's wild dream of gladness!

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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