Classic Poem

Weeping for thee, my love, thro' the long day,
Lonely and wearily life wears away.
Weeping for thee, my love, thro' the long night--
No rest in darkness, no joy in light!
Naught left but Memory whose dreary tread
Sounds thro' this ruined heart, where all lies dead--
Wakening the echoes of joy long fled!

* * * * *

Of many a stanza, this alone
Had 'scaped oblivion--like the one
Stray fragment of a wreck which thrown
With the lost vessel's name ashore
Tells who they were that live no more.
When thus the heart is in a vein
Of tender thought, the simplest strain
Can touch it with peculiar power--
As when the air is warm, the scent
Of the most wild and rustic flower
Can fill the whole rich element--
And in such moods the homeliest tone
That's linked with feelings, once our own--
With friends or joy gone by--will be
Worth choirs of loftiest harmony!

But some there were among the group
Of damsels there too light of heart
To let their spirits longer droop,
Even under music's melting art;
And one upspringing with a bound
From a low bank of flowers, looked round
With eyes that tho' so full of light
Had still a trembling tear within;
And, while her fingers in swift flight
Flew o'er a fairy mandolin,
Thus sung the song her lover late
Had sung to her--the eve before
That joyous night, when as of yore
All Zea met to celebrate
The feast of May on the sea-shore.