Classic Poem

I saw her last, when love's warm light
Lay deep within her modest eye,
When all futurity was bright
Before her, like a summer sky—
It quieted both pain and fear,
To see a thing so happy, near.

Yet was this blessedness, a flower
Too delicate for earth—alas!
Its leaves were withered in an hour;
As sunshine glideth from the grass,
And melts invisibly away,
So did she vanish from the day.

Then came wild sorrow upon all,
That one so full of gentle grace,
Beneath so rude a touch should fall;
By eyes, that never saw her face,
Tears from the inmost heart were shed,
And all the happy mourned the dead:

They mourned her as the beautiful,
Even as we mourn the rose's doom,
When every crimson leaf grows dull,
And death feeds on the damask bloom,
They mourned her as she was—but I
Looked to our vanished infancy—

To those deep memories within,
Wherewith all lives that are, begin—
The early unforgotten things
To which the spirit ever clings,
And feels, throughout all change, to be
The seal of her identity.
Our veins with the same blood were rife,
The selfsame summer gave us life,
And this was as a silken tie,
Of fellowship and sympathy—
Therefore, through childhood's sunny weather,
We were, as loving twins, together:
Together in the greenwood shade,
Day after day we laughed and played;
Together, with hushed breath, drew nigh
To snare the crimson butterfly,
Which glittered, like a living gem,
Upon some flowery diadem.
Alas! how vain the hope I cherished,
That, though the childish joys had perished,
The memory of these pleasant things
Would lend the weary spirit wings,
To flee away from care and sadness,
From life's great sea of tossing foam,
From manhood's grief, and manhood's gladness,
Back to her youthful home.
Alas! that sunny place is not,
A cloud has deepened o'er the spot,
So that whene'er I summon back
The faded hues of childhood's track,
There comes upon me a distress,
A sense of solemn loneliness,
Which makes my spirit for a time
Shrink from that bright and blessed clime,
To find a home in future things,
For the deep heart's imaginings;
Since she, who shared the past with me,
Has put on immortality.