Page:The Seaside and the Fireside.djvu/68

We sat and talked until the night,
 Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
 Our voices only broke the gloom.

We spake of many a vanished scene,
 Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
 And who was changed, and who was dead;

And all that fills the hearts of friends,
 When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
 And never can be one again;

The first slight swerving of the heart,
 That words are powerless to express,
And leave it still unsaid in part,
 Or say it in too great excess.