Thou art dethroned and vanishes your power;

I sit alone with folded hands and weep,

While close the minutes chase our parting hour.

Your lips are dumb, and with a feeble hand

You turn the pages of the year’s great book,

While my wet cheeks are with an odor fanned,

Like that the summer breeze from violets shook.

I gaze into the volume. Undiscerned

Some scenes advance, like phantoms hurry by,

And thoughts look from the leaves now swifter turned

As meaningless as would a stranger’s eye.

I meet familiar names in Death’s long list,

I pass new graves where tears have thawed the snows,

I search my heart lest something I have missed,

But in its garden find no dying rose.

Thou hast been kind to me; no marble urn

Chills the warm pulses of my heart to night,

And from the thought my pen doth gladly turn

To offer homage ere you take your flight.

Bright recollections thou hast left instead,

That twinkle in the firmament of thought,

And lover-like I sit and gaze o’erhead

Upon the starry gems thy hand has wrought.

Far down the by-path of a summer dream,

Glad voices call and fingers beckon me—

An oar dips music from a moonlit stream,

Where in thy prime I sailed, Old Year, with thee

And now, e’en in the shadow of thy hearse,

Ungarland save with fated mistletoe,

While midnight fiends the hours call like a curse,

You clasp my hand and smiling on me—go.

Farewell! A friend thou’st been to me, and I

Shall wander through the burial ground of years,

And often with an introspective eye

Search out thy grave and water it with tears.