Twenty Years

Beg your pardon, old fellow! I think     I was dreaming just now when you spoke.     The fact is, the musical clink     Of the ice on your wine-goblets brink     A chord of my memory woke.     And I stood in the pasture-field where     Twenty summers ago I had stood;     And I heard in that sound, I declare,     The clinking of bells in the air,     Of the cows coming home from the wood.     Then the apple-bloom shook on the hill;     And the mullein-stalks tilted each lance;     And the sun behind Rapalyes mill     Was my uttermost West, and could thrill     Like some fanciful land of romance.     Then my friend was a hero, and then     My girl was an angel. In fine,     I drank buttermilk; for at ten     Faith asks less to aid her than when     At thirty we doubt over wine.     Ah, well, it does seem that I must     Have been dreaming just now when you spoke,     Or lost, very like, in the dust     Of the years that slow fashioned the crust     On that bottle whose seal you last broke.     Twenty years was its age, did you say?     Twenty years? Ah, my friend, it is true!     All the dreams that have flown since that day,     All the hopes in that time passed away,     Old friend, Ive been drinking with you!