Where the oldest bard is as the young, And the pipe is ever dropping honey, And the lyre's strings are ever strung.
Dear boon fellows of life as well as literature, how often have we risen from those tables, to pursue together the not too swiftly flying petticoat, through the terrestrial firmament of shining streets, aglow with the midnight sun of pleasure, a-dazzle with eyes brighter far than the city lamps--passionate pilgrims of the morning star! Ah! we go on such quests no more--"another race hath been and other palms are won."
No, not always women--but naturally women nearly always, for it was the time of rosebuds, and we were wisely gathering them while we might--
Through the many to the one-- O so many! Kissing all and missing none, Loving any.
Every man who has lived a life worthy the name of living has his own private dream of fair women, the memory of whom is as a provision laid up against the lean years that must come at last, however long they may be postponed by some special grace of the gods, which is, it is good to remember, granted to some--the years when one has reluctantly to accept that the lovely game is almost, if not quite at an end, and to watch the bloom and abundance of fragrant young creatures pass us, unregarding, by. And, indeed, it may happen that a man who has won what is for him the fairest of all fair faces, and has it still by his side, may enter sometimes, without disloyalty, that secret gallery of those other fair faces that were his before hers, in whom they are all summed up and surpassed, had dawned upon his life. We shall hardly be loyal to the present if we are coldly disloyal to the past. In the lover's calendar, while there is but one Madonna, there must still be minor saints, to whom it is meet, at certain times and seasons, to offer retrospective candles--saints that, after the manner of many saints, were once such charming sinners for our sakes, that utter forgetfulness of them were an impious boorishness surely unacceptable to the most jealous of Madonnas. Public worship of them is not, of course, desirable, but occasional private celebrations are surely more than permissible--such celebrations as that "night of memory and tears" which Landor consecrated to Rose Aylmer, or that song which Thackeray consecrated to certain loves of the long ago--