Jaunty robin-redbreast, Singing loud and cheerly, From the pink-white apple tree In the morning early, Tell me, is your merry song Just for your own pleasure, Poured from such a tiny throat, Without stint or measure?
Little yellow buttercup, By the way-side smiling, Lifting up your happy face, With such sweet beguiling, Why are you so gayly clad— Cloth of gold your raiment? Do the sunshine and the dew Look to you for payment?
Roses in the garden beds, Lilies, cool and saintly, Darling blue-eyed violets, Pansies, hooded quaintly, Sweet-peas that, like butterflies, Dance the bright skies under, Bloom ye for your own delight, Or for ours, I wonder!
THE URN
Across the blue Atlantic waves She sent a little gift to me: A golden urn—a graceful toy As one need care to see.
Smiling, I held it in my hand, Thinking her message o’er and o’er, Nor dreamed her swift feet pressed so near The undiscovered shore.
Oh! had it been a funeral urn— The gift my darling sent to me With loving thoughts and tender words Across the heaving sea—
A funeral urn which might have held Her sacred ashes, sealed in rest Utter as that which holds in thrall Some pulseless marble breast!
Where drifts she now? On what far seas Floateth to-day her golden hair? What stars behold her pale hands, clasped In ecstasy of prayer?
Forever in this thought of mine, Like the fair Lady of Shalott, She drifteth, drifteth with the tide, But never comes to Camelot!