The loved of early days!
Where are they?--where?
Not on the shining braes,
The mountains bare;--
Not where the regal streams
Their foam-bells cast--
Where childhood's time of dreams
And sunshine pass'd.
Some in the mart, and some
In stately halls,
With the ancestral gloom
Of ancient walls;
Some where the tempest sweeps
The desert waves;
Some where the myrtle weeps
On Roman graves.
And pale young faces gleam
With solemn eyes;
Like a remember'd dream
The dead arise;
In the red track of war
The restless sweep;
In sunlit graves afar
The loved ones sleep.
The braes are dight with flowers,
The mountain streams
Foam past me in the showers
Of sunny gleams;
But the light hearts that cast
A glory there,
In the rejoicing past,
Where are they?--where?