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A FABLE.
- SILENT and sunny was the way
- Where Youth and I danced on together:
- So winding and embowered o’er,
- We could not see one rood before.
- Nevertheless all merrily
- We bounded onward, Youth and I,
- Leashed closely in a silken tether:
- (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
- Ah Youth, ah Youth, but I would fain
- See thy sweet foolish face again!
- It came to pass, one morn of May,
- All in a swoon of golden weather,
- That I through green leaves fluttering
- Saw Joy uprise on Psyche wing:
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- Eagerly, too eagerly
- We followed after,—Youth and I,—
- Till suddenly he slipped the tether:
- (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
- “Where art thou, Youth?” I cried. In vain;
- He never more came back again.
- Yet onward through the devious way
- In rain or shine, I recked not whether,
- Like many other maddened boy
- I tracked my Psyche‐wingèd Joy;
- Till, curving round the bowery lane,
- Lo,—in the pathway stood pale Pain,
- And we met face to face together:
- (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
- “Whence comest thou?”—and I writhed in vain—
- “Unloose thy cruel grasp, O Pain!”
- But he would not. Since, day by day
- He has ta’en up Youth’s silken tether
- And changed it into iron bands.
- So through rich vales and barren lands
- Solemnly, all solemnly,
- March we united, he and I;
- And we have grown such friends together
- (Well‐a‐day, well‐a‐day!)
- I and this my brother Pain,
- I think we’ll never part again.
