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Love makes smooth the roughest pathway, Love makes bloom the budless bough—
Youth and Hope thou takest with thee: must I lonely wander now?
And the way so steep before me, wanting thee I could not climb;
No! I'll trace our happy footprints backwards o'er the path of Time.’
But alas I how vain my hoping— on my ears those dread words fall:
‘On! on! Time knows no returning; Death is king and end of all.’

Lone I journeyed on, and Sorrow rose with pale cheeks by my side,
Weeping oft that Love had left me, sighing oft that Youth had died;
And a dread shape strode before me, with wild eyes and streaming hair,
Then my heart grew cold with anguish, for I knew this was Despair.
But some hand from out the darkness drew her back into the night,
And the sky grew fair, for Heaven shed upon my path its light.
‘Hope!’ I cried, ‘thou hast returned; bring'st thou back my Love to me?’