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So fair, and yet so desolate; So wan, and yet so young; Oh, there is grief too deep for tears, Too seal’d for tell-tale tongue! With a faded floweret in her hand, Poor little hand, so white! And dim blue eye, from her casement high She looks upon the night.

Only a little rosebud — Only a simple flower — But it blooms no more as it seem’d to bloom Through many a lone lone hour. As they float from her fever’d touch away, The petals wither’d and brown, All the hopes she deem’d too bright to be dream'd Sink trembling and fluttering down.



It needs no hush of the Present To call back the sweet calm Past; The lightest summer murmuring May be heard through the wintry blast; And the wind is rough with sob and with sough To-night upon gable and tree, Till the bare elms wail like spectres pale, And the pines like a passionate sea.

But she thinks of a dreamy twilight: On the garden walk below, Of the laurels whispering in their sleep, And the white rose in full blow. The early moon had sunk away Like some pale queen, to die In the costly shroud of an opal float! To the June air’s tremulous sigh.

All, all too freshly real; The soft subdued eclipse, Hand in hand, and heart in heart And the thrill of the wedded lips; Those tender memories, how they flush Pale cheek and brow again, Though heart be changed, and lip estranged, That swore such loving then!

’Tis but the old, old story Sung so often in vain; For man all the freedom of passion, For woman the calm and the pain. Tell it the soul whose grief is read In the poor, pale suffering face, It will still cling on to a love that is gone With the warmth of its first embrace.

Oh, ’tis well for the careless spirit To weave the web of rhyme, And prison the idle memories That float on the breath of time; But better for many an aching heart, If ever it might be so, To forget, to forget the light that has set, And the dreams of long ago.