To Mrs. Rosanna Osterman/My Valentines
My Valentines.
By Col. A. M. Hobby.
Come fill to the brim, let us drink to the day,
Old memories back it will bring,
One bumper, to banish life’s winter away,
Then back again to its glorious spring.
Old age shall be cheered at the banquet of mirth,
As love lighted vision arise.
Like blooms that are hidden, will spring from the earth,
When woed by the smile of the skies.
I am standing again at the portal of youth,
’Mid meomories many and tender,
And the future grows bright as the rainbow of truth,
Unrolls in its magical splendor.
In the school-house again, where in solitude waived
The sorrow-toned shadowless pine,
At the old oken desk, where her name is engraved,
I am writing my first Valentine.
A poor wounded heart is suspended above,
Cupid’s arrows are piercing it through,
And I swore be each note in the gamut of love,
That my love should forever be true.
Its edges were gilt, and its sides were embossed,
Without an erasure or blot,
The t’s with a rule were all carefully cross’d,
And the i’s had their heavy round dot.
Her face was all beauty, and faultless her form,
Her cheeks wore the roses of May,
Her ringlets were tinged with the blushes of morn,
And her eyes they were azure as day.
We parted, and others were soon in her place,
I fervently sighed as they passed,
I hailed them in turn, queen of beauty and grace,
And the dearest was always the last.
And whence do you ask, are those Valentines now?
One has gone to the Kingdom of peace
I smoothed down her tresses, and kissed her cold brow
It was white as the young lamb’s fleece,
And long hath she slept where the jessamine arch,
Bends lovingly over her tomb;
And spring seems to pause, in her glorious march,
To shed there her fragrance and bloom.
Another whose days have been cheerless and cold—
Her brow keeps the record of care,
She bartered affection for acres and gold—
For a life that she never could share;
And others are treading life’s silent decline—
Some invite me perhaps to a dance,
And a bumper or two of the mellow old wine,
Rekindles the early romance.
In the smile of the daughter the mother appears,
And the idol I worshipped is seen,
I gaze and forget, that a river of years
Is silently flowing between.
Oh! well is it thus, that my fancy takes wing,
My batchelor cares to assuage,
Thus rose buds are pluck’d from the gardens of spring,
To blook in the winter of age.
1863.
