The Old School-Chum

He puts the poem by, to say
His eyes are not themselves to-day!

A sudden glamour o'er his sight--
A something vague, indefinite--

An oft-recurring blur that blinds
The printed meaning of the lines,

And leaves the mind all dusk and dim
In swimming darkness--strange to him!

It is not childishness, I guess,--
Yet something of the tenderness

That used to wet his lashes when
A boy seems troubling him again;--

The old emotion, sweet and wild,
That drove him truant when a child,

That he might hide the tears that fell
Above the lesson--"Little Nell."

And so it is he puts aside
The poem he has vainly tried

To follow; and, as one who sighs
In failure, through a poor disguise

Of smiles, he dries his tears, to say
His eyes are not themselves to-day.