HOW cold and wan the present lowers, O my true Love! around us twain; How little of the Past is ours! How changed the friends who yet remain. We cannot without envying view The eyes with twenty summers gay; For eyes 'neath which our childhood grew Have long since passed from earth away. Each hour still steals our youth: alas! No hour will e'er the theft restore: There's but one thing that will not pass, -- The heart I loved thee with of yore. That heart, where nothing new can light, Where old thoughts draw their cherished breath, -- It loves thee, dear, with all the might That Life can wield in strife with Death. If it of Death the conqueror be, If there's in Man some nobler part That wins him immortality, -- Then thou hast, Love! that deathless heart. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...WHAT WE SAID THE LIGHT SAID by JAMES GALVIN LET ME NOT LOSES MY DREAM by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON LETHE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON JONES'S PRIVATE ARGYMENT by SIDNEY LANIER EPITAPH IN A CHURCH-YARD IN CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA by AMY LOWELL WAITING IN THE CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL by CLARENCE MAJOR SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: ELIZABETH CHILDERS by EDGAR LEE MASTERS |