With pensive eyes the little room I view, Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long; With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two, And a light heart still breaking into song:
Making a mock of life, and all its cares, Rich in the glory of my rising sun, Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
Yes;‘ tis a garret — let him know't who will — There was my bed — full hard it was and small; My table there — and I decipher still Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away, Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun; For you I pawned my watch how many a day, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
And see my little Jessy, first of all; She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes: Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl Across the narrow casement, curtain-wise;
Now by the bed her petticoat glides down, And when did woman look the worse in none? I have heard since who paid for many a gown, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
One jolly evening, when my friends and I Made happy music with our songs and cheers, A shout of triumph mounted up thus high, And distant cannon opened on our ears:
We rise,— we join in the triumphant strain,— Napoleon conquers — Austerlitz is won — Tyrants shall never tread us down again, In the brave days when I was twenty-one.
Let us begone — the place is sad and strange — How far, far off, these happy times appear; All that I have to live I'd gladly change For one such month as I have wasted here —
To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power, From founts of hope that never will outrun, And drink all life's quintessence in an hour, Give me the days when I was twenty-one!
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