What great blessings round me smiled,
With a wild, exulting leap
I’d have struck on wisdom’s door;
Piled up knowledge heap on heap
In those happy days of yore.
Both were weaving rapidly, as if their very lives were an ephemeral inspiration, and they were thus weaving it away in illuminated letters, that at least that inspiration might live, though the very weaving should cost both their lives. So I hastened again to look, and to listen to the other richer and deeper melody.—
Ah, those days are gone forever;
Time has wafted them away;
Happiness now seems a phantom
Of a joyous yesterday.