There memory’s shallop bore us dreamily, Through changeful windings, to the long, long days Of June vacations. How we boys would thrid The alder thickets at the water’s edge, Conjecturing forward, though the Present lay Like Eden round us; for the Future shone— The sun to which each young heart turned for light! What wild conceits of great, oracular lives, Ourselves would equal! but let that go by: Each has gone by, in turn, to humbler fates. Sometimes we angled, and our trolling hooks Swung the gray pickerel from his reedy shoals. Beyond a horseshoe bend, the current’s force Wore out a deeper channel, where the shore Fell off, precipitous, on the western side. There dived the bathers; there I learned to swim,— Flung far into the middle stream by one Who watched my gaspings, laughing, till my limbs, Half of themselves, struck out, and held me up. Far down, a timbered dam, from bank to bank, Shut back the waters in a shadowy lake, About a mimic island. Languidly The chestnuts still infoliate its space, And still the whispering flags are intertwined With whitest water-lilies near the marge. Close by, the paper-mill, with murmurous wheel, Still glistens through the branches, while its score Of laughing maidens throng the copse at noon. But we, with careless arms upon the rail, Peered through and through the water; almost saw Its silvery Naiads, from their wavering depths, Gleam with strange faces upward; almost heard Sweet voices carol: “Ah, you all come back! We charm your childhood; then you roam away, To float on alien waters, like the winds; But, ah, you all come back,—come dreaming back!” At last I broke the silence: “See,” I said To Gilbert, “see how fair our dear old stream! How calm, beneath the shadow of these piers, It eddies in and out, and cools itself In slumberous ripples whispering repose.” But he made answer: “Yes, this August day The wave is summer-charmed, the fields are hazed; But in the callow Spring, when Easter winds Are on us, laden with rain, these fickle streams— More gentle now than in his cradled sleep Some Alexander—take up arms, spread wide, Leap high and cruel in a fierce campaign Along their valleys. See this trellised bridge, New-built, and firmer than the one from which We fellows dropped the line:—_that_ went away Two years ago, like straw before a gale, In the great April flood, of which you heard, When George and Lucy Dorrance lost their lives. I saw them perish. You remember her,— She that was Lucy Hall,—a charming girl, The fairest of our schoolmates, with a heart Light as her smile and fastened all upon The boy that won her; yet her glances fell Among us, right and left, like shooting stars In clear October nights when winds are still.