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.