O MEMORIES of green and pleasant places,
Where happy birds their wood-notes twittered low!
O love that lit the dear familiar faces
We buried long ago!
From barren heights their sweetness we remember,
And backward gaze with wistful, yearning eyes,
As hearts regret, mid snow-drifts of December,
The summer’s sunny skies.
Glad hours that seemed their rainbow tints to borrow
From some illumined page of fairy lore;
Bright days that never lacked a bright to-morrow,
Days that return no more.
Fair gardens, with their many-blossomed alleys,
And red, ripe roses breathing out perfume;
Deep violet nooks in green, sequestered valleys
Empurpled o’er with bloom.
Sunset that lighted up the brown-leaved beeches,
Turning their dusky glooms to glittering gold;
Moonlight that on the river’s fern-fringed beaches
Streamed white-rayed, silvery cold.
O’er moorlands bleak we wander weary-hearted,
Through many a tangled, wild, and thorny maze,
Remembering as in dreams the days departed,
The bygone, happy days.
The Humbler Poets.
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