For ye, too, were flowers, ye dear ones! 
    Nursed in hope and reared in love,
  Looking fondly ever upward
    To the clear blue heaven above: 

  Smiling on the sun that cheered us,
    Rising lightly from the rain,
  Never folding up your freshness
    Save to give it forth again: 

  Never shaken, save by accents
    From a tongue that was not free,
  As the modest blossom trembles
    At the wooing of the bee.

  O! ’tis sad to lie and reckon
    All the days of faded youth,
  All the vows that we believed in,
    All the words we spoke in truth.

  Severed—­were it severed only
    By an idle thought of strife,
  Such as time might knit together;
    Not the broken chord of life!

  O my heart! that once so truly
    Kept another’s time and tune,
  Heart, that kindled in the spring-tide,
    Look around thee in the noon.

  Where are they who gave the impulse
    To thy earliest thought and flow? 
  Look around the ruined garden—­
    All are withered, dropped, or low!

  Seek the birth-place of the lily,
    Dearer to the boyish dream
  Than the golden cups of Eden,
    Floating on its slumbrous stream;

  Never more shalt thou behold her—­
    She, the noblest, fairest, best: 
  She that rose in fullest beauty,
    Like a queen, above the rest.

  Only still I keep her image
    As a thought that cannot die;
  He who raised the shade of Helen
    Had no greater power than I.

  O!  I fling my spirit backward,
    And I pass o’er years of pain;
  All I loved is rising round me,
    All the lost returns again.

  Blow, for ever blow, ye breezes,
    Warmly as ye did before! 
  Bloom again, ye happy gardens,
    With the radiant tints of yore!

  Warble out in spray and thicket,
    All ye choristers unseen;
  Let the leafy woodland echo
    With an anthem to its queen!

  Lo! she cometh in her beauty,
    Stately with a Juno grace,
  Raven locks, Madonna-braided
    O’er her sweet and blushing face: 

  Eyes of deepest violet, beaming
    With the love that knows not shame—­
  Lips, that thrill my inmost being
    With the utterance of a name.

  And I bend the knee before her,
    As a captive ought to bow,—­
  Pray thee, listen to my pleading,
    Sovereign of my soul art thou!

  O my dear and gentle lady,
    Let me show thee all my pain,
  Ere the words that late were prisoned
    Sink into my heart again.

  Love, they say, is very fearful
    Ere its curtain be withdrawn,
  Trembling at the thought of error
    As the shadows scare the fawn.

  Love hath bound me to thee, lady,
    Since the well-remembered day
  When I first beheld thee coming
    In the light of lustrous May.