When I Was Twenty by Bliss Carman — Read

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_It was June, and I was twenty. / All my wisdom, poor but plenty, / Never learned_ Festina lente. / _Youth is gone, but whither went he? _

Madeline came down the orchard / With a mischief in her eye, / Half demure and half inviting, / Melting, wayward, wistful, shy.

Four bright eyes that found life lovely, / And forgot to wonder why; / Four warm lips at one love-lesson, / Learned by heart so easily.

We gained something of that knowledge / No man ever yet put by, / But his after days of sorrow / Left him nothing but to die.

Madeline went up the orchard, / Down the hurrying world went I; / Now I know love has no morrow, / Happiness no by-and-by.

_Youth is gone, but whither went he? / All my wisdom, poor but plenty, / Never learned_ Festina lente. / _It was June, and I was twenty._

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