REMEMBRANCE.
Oh! give me the past with its clear golden light,Its beautiful dreamings that made it so bright;The stars that looked down from the azure and smiledSo brilliantly on me when I was a child.Before me now rolls the great sea of the past,Whose waves all about me its jewels have cast;And one that is dearest, and brightest, and best,I gather one moment to press to my breast.
I gaze on its brightness, and see in that gleamA face that once haunted love's earliest dream.The dream has long faded, the face passed away,The hopes that we cherished have gone to decay.Once madly I cast them away in my pride,And now fling their memory-gem in the tide.I stand at the tomb of those long-vanished years,Where the waves, lashing high, leave it studded with tears.
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