There are moments when my spirit wanders back to other years,
And time long, long departed, like the present still appears;
And I revel in the sunshine of those happy, happy hours,
When the sky of youth was cloudless, and its path was strewn with flowers.
O those days of dreamy sweetness! O those visions of delight!
Weaving garlands for the future, making all of earth too bright;
They come creeping through my memory like messengers of peace,
Telling tales of bygone blessings, bidding present sorrows cease.
Long-lost friends are gath'ring round me, smiling faces, gentle forms,
All unconscious of earth's struggles, all unmindful of its storms--
Beaming radiantly and beautiful, as in the days of youth,
When friendship was no mockery, when every thought was truth.
Joy, illuming every bosom, made fair nature fairer still--
Mirth sported on each summer breeze, and sung in every rill;
Beauty gleaming all around us, bright as dreams of fairy land--
Oh, faded now that lustre, scatter'd far that happy band!
Now deeply traced with sorrow is the once unclouded brow,
And eyes that sparkled joyously are dim with weeping now;
We are tasting life in earnest--all its vain illusions gone--
And the stars that glisten'd o'er our path are falling one by one.
Some are sleeping with their kindred--summer blossoms o'er them wave;
Some, lonely and unfriended, with the stranger found a grave;
While others now are wand'ring on a far and foreign shore,
And that happy, loving company shall meet--ah! never more.
But afar in mem'ry's garden, like a consecrated spot,
The heart's first hopes are hidden, and can never be forgot;
And the light that cheer'd us onward, in our airy early days--
Oft we linger in the distance to look back upon its rays.
Old Time, with hand relentless, may shed ruins o'er the earth,
May strew our path with sorrow, make a desert of our hearth--
Change may blight our fairest blossoms, shroud our clearest light in gloom;
But the flow'ry fields of early years shall never lose their bloom.