My friend, on this your wedding-day,
Where Love and Hope unite,
To yield with Hymenal ray
The bridal morning bright.--
When hands are clasped
And cups are quaffed,
When round go wishes true,
This song of mine
For Auld Lang Syne
I send to her and you.
An echo of the bygone times
To mingle with your wedding chimes!
"Good luck," on this your wedding morn,
"God speed" for years to be;
Good wishes, of old friendship born
For days ye both shall see.
When in your bowers,
Bloom promise-flowers,
Ah! ne'er may sorrow's gloom
Bring shadow there,
May sunlight fair
Your hearth and home illume!
All good, all joy, all blessing true,
I wish to your fair bride and you!
May Heaven its choicest riches send
To bless your life's long way;
May Love its lasting beauty lend
That age can't steal away.
Oh! may your sky
As swift years fly
Be cloudless, bright and fair;
May joys' own glow
Dispel all woe,
And chase away grim care!
May every good that God can send
Be yours through all your life, my friend!
"ONLY FRIENDS."
We said "good-bye" in a quiet lane,
the gloaming, years ago;
few were our words about "parting pain"--
we were "only friends" you know.
Good friends had we been in the dear, dead hours,
that still in our hearts would live,
At morn we had wandered the wild-wood bowers,
We had roamed through the lanes at eve.
We had gathered the sweets of the summer glades,
The rose, and the violet blue;
We had talked of Love in the twilight shades,
And of hearts that were tried and true.
But of our heart's hopes, or our own love-dreams,
Ah! never a word said we,
For Fate had forbidden our lips such themes,
And "friends" we could only be.
And our farewell came, like a boding gloom,
That darkened life's morning ray,
And joy's glad glow, and Hope's tender bloom
Died out of one heart that day.
How we thought in that hour of the bygone days,
Of the golden summer prime,
Of the mountains wild, and the woodland ways,
And the spell of the gloaming time!
And, it may be, the memory of whispered words
Came o'er us with subtle power,
Awaking, unbidden, our full hearts' chords
In the pain of that parting hour.
For our hands were clasped, and our lips once met,
The first time, and the last;
Ah me! 'twere well could we all forget,
Some scenes in our buried past;--
For the blue outline of the mountains high,
The lake, and the woodland green,
The quiet lane, and the twilight sky,
Too oft in my dreams are seen!
And still, tho' the summers are bright and fair,
And the summer woods are gay,
To me there is something wanting there
That has passed from my life away!