The many theater-goers who were pleased with Mr. Esmond’s comedy, “When We Were Twenty-One,” as played by the Goodwins, may like to see the Thackeray song from which the play took its name. It is an imitation of a poem by Beranger.

With pensive eyes the little room I view,
Where in my youth I weathered it so long,
With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
And a light heart still breaking into song;
Making a mock of life and all its cares,
Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Yes, ’tis a garret, let him know’t who will;
There was my bed—full hard it was and small;
My table there—and I decipher still
Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
Ye joys that Time hath swept with him away,
Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun
For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

* * *

One jolly evening, when my friends and I
Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
And distant cannon opened on our ears;
We rise—we join in the triumphant strain—
Napoleon conquers—Austerlitz is won—
Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

Let us begone—the place is sad and strange;
How far, far off those happy times appear;
All that I have to live I’d gladly change
For one such month as I have wasted here—
To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power
From founts of hope that never will return,
And drink all life’s quintessence in an hour—
Give me the days when I was twenty-one!