Classic Poem

My charming Kate!
(Let me at least in fancy call thee mine,
And taste, though dreamingly, a bliss divine!)
Sad is my fate
That I cannot thy violet eyes behold,
Nor the bright waving of thy locks of gold.

My pathway lies —
How distant, lovely Katharine, from thine own!
Far in the zenith of the sapphire zone,
Queen of the skies,
Thy star is set, and I my lonely sphere
Keep in the nadir through the circling year.
I saw thy smile
But once — yet oh! that once in memory glows
Like some rose-colored flame 'mid desert snows,
Or some green isle
Among the billows, which the seaman hails
When, lost and tost, he trims his shattered sails.

A maiden still,
Pure through the world in solitary pride
Thou movest, Katharine, like a heavenly bride!
So flows a rill,
Born in a mountain region, clear and free,
From its small fountain to the eternal sea.

My very name
I scarce can hope that thou may'st call to mind,
More than the rustling of last summer's wind —
I cannot claim
One of thy gentle thoughts, nor beg of fate
To yield me one faint sigh of charming Kate.

But yet at times
Through my heart's chords remembered voices breathe,
And make Æolian music, and I wreathe
Some wilding rhymes,
With pious hands to garland beauty's shrine —
And this the offering I lay on thine!