Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/347

SEEKING THE MAY-FLOWER And ah! from yonder trellised home,

Less sweet the faces are that peer

Than those of old, and voices come

Less musically to my ear.

Sigh not, ye breezy elms, but give

The murmur of my sweetheart's vows,

When Life was something worth to live,

And Love was young beneath your boughs!

Fade beauty, smiling everywhere,

That can from year to year outlast

Those charms a thousand times more fair,

And, O, our joys so quickly past!

Or smile to gladden fresher hearts

Henceforth: but they shall yet be led,

Revisiting these ancient parts,

Like me to mourn their glory fled.

SEEKING THE MAY-FLOWER

sweetest sound our whole year round,

'T is the first robin of the spring!

The song of the full orchard choir

Is not so fine a thing.

Glad sights are common: Nature draws

Her random pictures through the year,

But oft her music bids us long

Remember those most dear.

To me, when in the sudden spring

I hear the earliest robin's lay,

With the first trill there comes again

One picture of the May.

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