Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, by JOHN LAURENCE RENTOUL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

WHEN WE WERE YOUNG, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: When I was young and thou wast young
Last Line: A word light as a feather.
Alternate Author Name(s): Gage, Gervais
Subject(s): Children; Love - Beginnings; Youth; Childhood


I

WHEN I was young and thou wast young
And two fools played together,
The hat from thy fair head I flung,
But crushed and kept the feather.

Half wroth, half loving over much,
I twined it round my fingers;
The wrath has fled, the feather's touch
Round hand and heart it lingers.

It nestles at my bosom now,
Round hand and heart it lingers;
It sends the hot flush to my brow,
The hot blood to my fingers.

II

When I was twelve and thou wast ten
We roamed the hill together;
We chased the golden-crested wren,
We plucked the tinkling heather.

We beat the briers in mimic strife,
We trod the wild-rose under;
'We cleave,' quoth I, 'O little wife,
Dame Fortune's bars asunder!'

We flung the boulder of the brake
Adown the deep glen crashing:
O, list its plunge, and then the lake
Upon the pebbles washing!

And of the music that it made
We twined a mystic tether,
And wound and bound, in forest glade,
Two beating hearts together.

III

When thou wast wayward sweet eighteen,
And I was two years older,
The frost, alas, it fell between,
It froze thy bosom colder.

And when I knelt to worship thee
Once more upon the heather,
With reckless lips thou saidst to me—
"Pray, give me back my feather!"

And anger-stung was my reply,
Thy cheek, my sweet, did quiver:
I went: the lark sang heedless by,
The trout leapt in the river.

When we were children on the hill
We played the fool together;
But, ah, we fooled it deeper still
That morn upon the heather!

And two hearts, bound 'gainst time and tide
In sweet Love's mystic tether,
At one swift word were sundered wide,
A word light as a feather.





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