WHEN winter’s loom of cloud
Weaves robes of snow
To wrap the hills in shroud,
My meditations go
Where shuddering tempests blow
Above a little grave.
When spring’s pale wild-flowers wake
Where sunbeams play,
Must not my full heart break?
Birds, blossoms, come with May,—
Would that, some happy day,
My child could come again.
When air-built cloud-fleets sail
Blue summer’s sky,
And violets exhale
Their fragrant souls and die,
My soul lifts Rachel’s cry,
For, oh! the child is not.
Most mournful time of all
Is when the leaf
Fades, withering to its fall,
Ending its term so brief,
Like him, my joy, my grief,
Lost in the senseless grave.
The new moons come and go,
Stars rise and set,
Time’s healing waters flow
Across my wound, and yet
Grief cannot pay love’s debt;—
Love’s solace is to mourn.
ANNIVERSARY.
THIS is your birthday, dearest? Dearest wife,
Fond sweetheart of my youth and of my prime,
Lover and friend and comrade, in whose life
I live unconscious of the flight of time!
Three-score? and must we grant it so? Why, then
Thank Heaven we have tasted life thus long,
For life is rich, and shall grow sweeter when
Like mellowing wine age renders it less strong.
We shall grow old together, count the years,
Welcome each sunrise and each setting sun;
Together laugh our laugh or weep our tears,
Wait, act and suffer, till the sands be run.
I owned Golconda and the Coast of Pearl,
Being a boy—it was but yesterday;
One shared my fortune, giving hers—one girl—
Whither, my darling, fled youth’s dream away?