My Playmate

The pines were dark on Ramoth hill,     Their song was soft and low;     The blossoms in the sweet May wind     Were falling like the snow.     The blossoms drifted at our feet,     The orchard birds sang clear;     The sweetest and the saddest day     It seemed of all the year.     For, more to me than birds or flowers,     My playmate left her home,     And took with her the laughing spring,     The music and the bloom.     She kissed the lips of kith and kin,     She laid her hand in mine     What more could ask the bashful boy     Who fed her fathers kine?     She left us in the bloom of May     The constant years told oer     Their seasons with as sweet May morns,     But she came back no more.     I walk, with noiseless feet, the round     Of uneventful years;     Still oer and oer I sow the spring     And reap the autumn ears.     She lives where all the golden year     Her summer roses blow;     The dusky children of the sun     Before her come and go.     There haply with her jewelled hands     She smooths her silken gown,     No more the homespun lap wherein     I shook the walnuts down.     The wild grapes wait us by the brook,     The brown nuts on the hill,     And still the May-day flowers make sweet     The woods of Follymill.     The lilies blossom in the pond,     The bird builds in the tree,     The dark pines sing on Ramoth hill     The slow song of the sea.     I wonder if she thinks of them,     And how the old time seems,     If ever the pines of Ramoth wood     Are sounding in her dreams.     I see her face, I hear her voice;     Does she remember mine?     And what to her is now the boy     Who fed her fathers kine?     What cares she that the orioles build     For other eyes than ours,     That other hands with nuts are filled,     And other laps with flowers?     O playmate in the golden time!     Our mossy seat is green,     Its fringing violets blossom yet,     The old trees oer it lean.     The winds so sweet with birch and fern     A sweeter memory blow;     And there in spring the veeries sing     The song of long ago.     And still the pines of Ramoth wood     Are moaning like the sea,     The moaning of the sea of change     Between myself and thee!