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Page 9
(_HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY._)
["Owing to advancing years, Mr. ---- has been compelled to
resign his position as ----" _Extract from any Daily Paper_."]
Advancing years! It cannot be.
What, JACK, the boy I've known--God bless me!
Why yes, it was in '43
That first we met, and--since you press me--
The time has sped without my knowledge,
That's close on fifty years ago;
Like some deep river's silent flow,
Since JACK and I first met at College.
'Twas on a cloudy Autumn day.
Fast fading into misty twilight;
The freshmen, as they trooped to pray,
Stepped bolder in the evening's shy light.
As yet we did not break the rules
In which the College deans immesh men,
We fledglings from a score of schools,
That far October's brood of freshmen.
Like one who starts upon a race,
The Chaplain through the service scurried.
From prayer to prayer he sped apace;
I marked him less the more he hurried.
My prayer-book fell--my neighbour smiled;
Reversing NEWTON with the apple,
I, by that neighbour's eye beguiled,
Quite lost my gravity in chapel.
And so we smiled. I see him still,
Blue eyes, where darting gleams of fun shine,
A smile like some translucent rill
That sparkles in the summer sunshine,
A manly mien, and unafraid,
Crisp hair, fair face, and square-set shoulders,
That made him on the King's Parade
The cynosure of all beholders.
And from this slight irreverence,
Too small, I hope, to waste your blame on,
We grew, in quite a Cambridge sense,
A sort of PYTHIAS and DAMON.
Together "kept," together broke
Laws framed by elderly Draconians,
And I was six, and JACK was stroke,
That famous night we bumped the Johnians.
How strong he was, how fleet of foot,
Ye bull-dogs witness, and ye Proctors;
How bright his jests, how aptly put
His scorn of duns, and Dons, and Doctors.
We laughed at care, read now and then--
Though vexed by EUCLID on the same bridge--
Ah, men in those great days were men
When JACK and I wore gowns at Cambridge.
We paid our fines, we paid our fees,
And, though the Dons seemed stony-hearted,
We both got very fair degrees,
And then, like other friends, we parted.
And when we said good-bye at last
I vowed through life to be his brother--
And more than forty years have passed
Since each set eyes upon the other.
And so through all these changing years
With all their thousand changing faces,
Their failures, hopes, successes, fears,
In half a hundred different places,
JACK still has been the same to me,
As bright within my memory's fair book
As when we met in '43,
And smiled about that fallen prayer-book.
Ah well, the moments swiftly stream
Unheeded through the upturned hour-glass;
I've lived my life, and dreamed my dream,
And quaffed the sweet, as now the sour glass.
But old and spent my mind strays back
To pleasant paths fresh-strewn with roses,
And I would see my old friend JACK
Once more before the curtain closes.
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