Classic Poem

How happy we were in the deep green wood,
Picking blackberries, you and I!
Round us the heather and tall ferns stood:
Over us shone the sky.
Rich and ripe in the bramble-copse
The tempting blackberries gleamed:
In the dark-green feathery fir-tree tops
The wood-doves cooed and dreamed.

Far away is the deep green wood
And the silent ferny glen
Where happy and hand-in-hand we stood,
Craving for nothing then.
Far away that happy day
Seems in the sunlit past:
Why will never a pleasure stay?
Do only the sad things last?

Yet in your album safely dried
A heather sprig I see:
The delicate purple tints have died,
But it blossoms still for me.
For the joyous past is never dead,—
No, still the blackberries gleam,
And still in the fir-trees overhead
The wood-doves coo and dream!