Classic Poem

To you, my friend, whose youthful feet have known
The same bright hills and valleys as my own;
Whose eye learned beauty from the selfsame scene,
Which, still remembered, keeps our pathways green;
From the same minstrel-stream and poet-birds
Learned what I oft would fain recall in words: —
To you I bring this handful of wild flowers.
By memory plucked from those dear fields of ours;
And when their freshness and their perfume die,
On friendship's shrine still let them fondly lie.