My Boyhood Days

By A. E. Reeves, M. D.

While sitting here this evening
   In my study, all alone,
Where I hear the shrieking whistle
   And the lifeless nature moan;
Something tells me I must ponder
   O’er the future and the past;
Then, I turn the leaves of memory,
   And, a subject comes, at last,
Of my boyhood, happy moments;
   For, I cannot call them years;
When I think of my old playmates
   I can scarce keep back my tears.
Then I sit, in idle dreaming;
   For it always gives me joy;
Old familiar places greet me,
   Just as when I was a boy.
Father’s orchard and his meadow
And the trees we used to climb,
Of the school house and the children,
   Only memories, now, are mine.
But, I cherish them with rapture,
   Prize them, as one only can
After boyhood days have left them
   And they have grown to be a man.
But, I hear the ticking timepiece
   On the mantle overhead,
And I must no longer ponder
   O’er the life that I have led;
For, the future is before me
   And the present is at hand,
Now, my vision, it has left me,
   Like the one in slumber land,
Truely, it is life’s commencement
   When the college days are o’er,
For I have realized, in earnest,
   What I only dreamed, before.
But: I feel no twinge of concience,
   To deny me of the time
That my mind has spent in wandering
   to those boyhood days of mine.