We said "good-bye" in a quiet lane,
the gloaming, years ago;
few were our words about "parting pain"—
we were "only friends" you know.

Good friends had we been in the dear, dead hours,
that still in our hearts would live,
At morn we had wandered the wild-wood bowers,
We had roamed through the lanes at eve.

We had gathered the sweets of the summer glades,
The rose, and the violet blue;
We had talked of Love in the twilight shades,
And of hearts that were tried and true.

But of our heart's hopes, or our own love-dreams,
Ah! never a word said we,
For Fate had forbidden our lips such themes,
And "friends" we could only be.

And our farewell came, like a boding gloom,
That darkened life's morning ray,
And joy's glad glow, and Hope's tender bloom
Died out of one heart that day.

How we thought in that hour of the bygone days,
Of the golden summer prime,
Of the mountains wild, and the woodland ways,
And the spell of the gloaming time!

And, it may be, the memory of whispered words
Came o'er us with subtle power,
Awaking, unbidden, our full hearts' chords
In the pain of that parting hour.

For our hands were clasped, and our lips once met,
The first time, and the last;
Ah me! 'twere well could we all forget,
Some scenes in our buried past;—

For the blue outline of the mountains high,
The lake, and the woodland green,
The quiet lane, and the twilight sky,
Too oft in my dreams are seen!

And still, tho' the summers are bright and fair,
And the summer woods are gay,
To me there is something wanting there
That has passed from my life away!