Old Acquaintance, shall the nights
You and I once talked together,
Be forgot like common things,--
Like some dreary night that brings
Naught save foul weather?
We were young, when you and I
Talked of golden things together,--
Of love and rhyme, of books and men:
Ah! our hearts were buoyant _then_
As the wild-goose feather!
Twenty years have fled, we know,
Bringing care and changing weather;
But hath th' heart no _backward_ flights,
That we again may see those nights,
And laugh together?
Jove's eagle, soaring to the sun,
Renews the past year's mouldering feather:
Ah, why not you and I, then, soar
From age to youth,--and dream once more
Long nights together.