Strange, strange,

How familiar all this is, and yet how strange

The walls and the pictures and the books and the self-absorbed faces about me

Strange, strange!

There is a boy sitting beside me at

the window;

His back bent, his head lowered,
Peering at the book in his hands

Through rusty, iron-rimmed specta

cles.

His ears are outspread and huge, His little eyes sparkle feverishly behind his thick lenses,

And his brow is knitted intently.

There is a girl standing near by,

With black curly hair and thick drooping lips,

Leaning heavily against the tall shelf as she reads;

Her eyes are gray and restless

And her lips are passionately a-quiver.

There is a young man standing beside her,

Tall and lanky, and long-haired, Casually scanning the book in his

hand,

Looking up from it from time to time As if waiting for someone.

What a flood of memories

My brain is dizzy with them!

A dark girl,

Ill-featured and pimply,

Sits at the table opposite the red-haired

librarian.

Her long nose strains upward out of

her face,

Her shell-rimmed spectacles rest back against her cheeks like cartwheels,

But her eyes shine from under them, Kindly and sweet,

Like sun-warmed pools.

Strange, strange!

How familiar all this is, and yet how strange!

There are a boy and girl talking there together,

Beside that window,

By the gray, dormant radiator.
Half-drawn to her, half-afraid of her,
He fidgets nervously with his books,
Looking aside as he speaks to her
In long jerky sentences;

And her eyes are dark and soft;

And her lips are pale and sweet;

And her chin so prettily pointed.

Ghosts, ghosts!

Ghosts of my old selves and my old

loves and my old dreams

How I know you all . . .

Boy, there,

With the Slavic face and the Jewish

soul;

With the stubborn nose and the sen

sitive mouth

What are you reading?

Keats or Shelley or Swinburne or

Browning

Which is it now?

Girl,

With the passionate lips and the rest

less eyes,

Are you reading "The Diary of Marie

Bashkirtseff"?

And does your heart ache and does

your soul smart

With pride, ambition and love

Are you building here another Lesbos, For another Sappho?

And you,

With the homely face and the strong

sweet smile,

What are you reading—

George Eliot or Emily Brontë;

Or are you dreaming of Georges Sand?
And your heart is secretly pleased
At the thought of the genius and fame