Along the desert pathway of my years
The untarnished green of an oasis lies,
Full many a bliss, watered by love’s since tears,
Full many a note, that in the distance dies;
And I will pause, and gather fresh those sweets,
And bind their buds in chaplets on my brows;
I’ll hail what youth soe’er my wandering meets,
“See here the guerdon of my childhood’s vows.”
So, joy’s unripened blossoms shall forth peep
From dewy sluices of long-buried grief;
And love, though dead, shall through my pulses leap,
And pinnacle the Past on rapture’s reef.
Memory shall gild with fancy what is gone,
And dim indulgence dreamingly live on.