Janet Poem by Alexander Anderson

On what part of this rough and toiling planet
Are you now this lonely hour—sweet Janet, say?
O, tell me if you can?—alas, I cannot—
Many long, long years have come and flown away
Since we parted from that dear old school together—
I to sadly toil and dream in idle rhyme,
Both now weary tasks; but you, oh! tell me whither
Tend your footsteps in this happy summer time?


Still, at moments when I slip into my trances,
And I see the schoolhouse by the noisy stream,
Then again come back to me the happy fancies
That of old I thought it heaven itself to dream;
Then I see you with your laughing eyes so merry,
Blue as summer skies when all their clouds have flown;
Pouting lips that were as full as any cherry;
Long dark hair that fell in curls so richly down.


Ah! in those same blue eyes of thine how often
Did I look and see myself within their hue,
Till I felt my own all boyish bosom soften
With a strange, sweet, yearning tenderness for you.
Then your lightest whisper, as you sat beside me,
Had the power to wake me with its fairy sound,
And, as soft as pinions of the angels, guide me
To the far-off dreams within the future bound.


And, Janet, do you mind the time when sitting
At our tasks, we then thought of no easy kind,
That you placed your arm around me, all unwitting
Of the fingers pointed at you from behind;
Till you heard the whisper growing loud, and, turning,
You lisp'd out in the dear familiar tone,
'Hoots, what's aboot a cuddle?' then with burning
Cheek and brow half-hidden by your book, read on.


Heart! but as I write this rhyme, again around me
Creeps, as soft as in that day, your slender arm;
And the magic spell that in your presence bound me
Comes again, and all my heart grows light and warm.
I can hear no whisper, see no idle finger
Pointed at me as I sit and dream and think,
But the silence and the bliss that still will linger
When the past is busy with us, and we drink.


But a truce to all this fond yet foolish dreaming—
Who knows but, as I write, that you are now
Grown into wife, and with a face all beaming
Look upward to a broad and manly brow;
Or sit in the long evening lightly humming
Some early love-song that still sang of this;
Then start to hear a well-known footstep coming,
And hold your baby upward for a kiss?


It were vain to wish you happy in such duty,
If such duty now has claim'd thy gentle life;
Yet to look again upon your ripen'd beauty—
See how you look when blossom'd into wife;
Sit beside you, hear your talk and merry laughter,
Lighting up your eyes so large, and bright, and blue:
All this lives but to die a moment after,
As the distance rises up between us two.


It may happen, then, that with such distance lying
Between thy goings out and those of mine,
That I may not see you, but go onward sighing
For the dreams a fading light has made divine;
Yet the magic spell that in your presence bound me
Shall atone for all when I recall to mind
How you put your little loving arm around me,
In that dear old school now left so far behind.