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GAIN ye come, again ye throng around me.
 * Dim, shadowy beings of my boyhood’s dream!

Still shall I bless, as then, your spell that bound me?
 * Still bend to mists and vapors as ye seem?

Nearer ye come: I yield me as ye found me
 * In youth your worshipper; and as the stream

Of air that folds you in its magic wreaths, Flows by my lips, youth’s joy my bosom breathes.

Lost forms and loved ones ye are with you bringing,
 * And dearest images of happier days,

First-love and friendship in your path upspringing,
 * Like old tradition’s half-remembered lays,

And long-slept sorrows waked, whose dirge-like singing
 * Recalls my life’s strange labyrinthine maze,

And names the heart-mourned many a stern doom, Ere their year’s summer, summoned to the tomb.

They hear not these my last songs, they whose greeting
 * Gladdened my first; my spring-time friends have gone,