G.W.C.
DIRGE
Time laid within an early grave
Those hopes, so delicate and sweet,
I wondered not I could not save,
But that they did sooner fleet.
Life has its fading summer dream,
Its hope is crowned with one full hour,
And yet its best deservings seem
Buds all unworthy such a flower.
How well that happy hour is bought
By an after-life of sorrow!
The golden sunset yields a thought
Which adorns the dreary morrow.
We meet no more as we have met;
Thy heart made music once with mine,
Which now is still, and we forget
The art that made our youth divine.
One glance reaps beauty, nevermore
It wears a lustre as at first;
We come again—the harvest o'er
To no new flow'ring can be nursed.
XXXI
N.Y., April 12th, 1846.
My dear Friend,—I meant to have given you some verses when you were here as you asked, but I forgot it. Now I send this. It is so different from Wentworth Higginson's that I do not feel as if the same road had been run over by us[1]. And as each Phalanx will be a centre of innumerable railroads in the age of harmony, why not its paper of paper railroads now? This was written in Concord some time since.