As out of the west they swept down the vale;
How responsive it seemed, how eager to fling
Its banners of purple to the ravishing gale.
Like the honey bee sipping the sweets of a flower,
How oft and how richly my sense was regaled,
While sitting beneath my ivy clad bower
I drank in the perfume its blossoms exhaled.
The garden is gone, and the old lilac tree
Stands no longer by the back entry door;
But its fragrance remains, reminder to me