"Indulgent Memory wakes, and, lo! they live!"
--RODGERS
Deathless, while the years are flying,
And all lesser hopes are dying.
To my widowed heart near lying
By a life-time's love embalmed,
Is a memory, dear and tender,
And in dreams its bygone splendour
Sweetest, holiest, balm can render
To my grief, by Time uncalmed.
In life's morning, young and early
Glistening fair through dew-drops pearly,
Burst a bud that promised fairly
Through the length of future days.
Ah! it charmed my passion'd dreaming,
Bathed in beauty's brightness, beaming
Fadeless still, and deathless seeming
In fond Hope's delusive haze.
And, as when in wild December,
June's calm twilights we remember,
So this dream in shadowy splendour
Ever haunts my lonely way;
And I see in fond delusion,
Glowing as in light Elysian,
The entrancing, old-time vision
Doom'd so early to decay.
Days when Hope, how false! still flaunted
Through my dreamings, love enchanted,
Framed by busy Fancy, haunted
By glad visions of delight,--
Morns of light, and sunsets golden,
Dreams of legends, grand and olden,
Hopes for future years, withholden
From our youthful, yearning sight.
Past and gone! Ah! vain my sighing,--
Hope's dead leaves are round me lying,
But their fragrances, undying,
Like a hallowed incense rise;
And I feel, with joy unspoken,
That the spirit love unbroken
Leaves this Memory for a token
Of its truth, that never dies.
In that land whose beauty vernal
Through tried ages blooms eternal
Thou, in bliss undreamed, supernal
Baskest in the glory-light
Where celestial joys inspire
All heaven's vast, unnumbered choir
With sweet songs that never tire,
Through the fadeless summer bright.
Here, how sad this dreary roaming,
Through the shadows of earth's gloaming,
Waiting for the longed-for coming
Of the lingering Morning Star;
But swift time is onward fleeting--
Backward is the past retreating,
Nearer, nearer draws our meeting
In the future, dim and far.