1872
[WHEN YOU GO AWAY]
When you go away, my friend,
When we say our last good-bye,
Then the summer time will end,
And the winter will be nigh.
Though the green grass decks the heather,
And the birds sing all the day,
There will be no summer weather,
After you have gone away.
When I look into your eyes,
I shall thrill with sharpest pain;
Thinking that beneath the skies,
I may never look again.
You will feel a moment's sorrow--
I shall feel a lasting grief;
You forgetting on the morrow--
I, to mourn with no relief
When we say the last, sad words,
And you are no longer near,
All the winds, and all the birds,
Can not keep the summer here.
Life will lose its full completeness,
Lose it, not for you, but me;
All the beauty and the sweetness
Earth can hold, I shall not see.
1870
[BLEAK WEATHER]
Dear love, where the red lilies blossomed and grew,
The white snows are falling;
And all through the wood, where I wandered with you,
The loud winds are calling;
And the robin that piped to us tune upon tune,
Neath the elm--you remember,
Over tree-top and mountain has followed the June,
And left us--December.
Has left, like a friend that is true in the sun,
And false in the shadows.
He has found new delights, in the land where he's gone,
Greener woodlands and meadows.
What care we? let him go! let the snow shroud the lea,
Let it drift on the heather!
We can sing through it all; I have you--you have me,
And we'll laugh at the weather.
The old year may die, and a new one be born
That is bleaker and colder;
But it cannot dismay us; we dare it--we scorn.
For love makes us bolder.
Ah Robin! sing loud on the far-distant lea,
Thou friend in fair weather;
But here is a song sung, that's fuller of glee,
By two warm hearts together.