IV.
“How soon we are forgotten clean
When we are gone,” quoth Rip,
We perish and the stream of death
Engulfs the proudest ship;
Gone!—like a faded, broken plume
Dropped from an eagle’s wing,
Or pebble tossed by a sportive child,
In the depths of the Old Rock Spring.
V.
Some in silence and some in strife,
Friends, passed to the dim Unknown,
In manhood’s prime or the morn of life,
And I am left alone;
In vain do I essay a song,
On a harp with broken string,
While the hot tears trickle down my cheeks,
And fall in the Old Rock Spring.
A LYRIC FOR LILIAN.
I Bring Thee a Garland.
I bring thee a garland, O, violet-eyed maid
Its exquisite bloom in thy dark locks, I braid.
Love nourished each flower with a sigh and a tear,
And the sigh and the tear
Shall make them more dear,
And bring them new charms with each vanishing year.