FOREVERMORE.

O heart that vainly follows

The flight of summer swallows,

Far over holts and hollows,

O'er frozen buds and flowers;

To violet seas and levels,

Where Love Time's locks dishevels

With merry mimes and revels

Of aphrodisiac Hours.

O Love who, dreaming, borrows

Dead love from sad to-morrows,

The broken heart that sorrows,

The blighted hopes that weep;

Pale faces pale with sleeping;

Red eyelids red with weeping;

Dead lips dead secrets keeping,

That shake the deeps of sleep!

O Memory that showers

About the withered hours

White, ruined, sodden flowers,

Dead dust and bitter rain;

Dead loves with faces teary;

Dead passions wan and dreary;

The weary, weary, weary,

Dead heart-ache and the pain!

O give us back the blisses,

Lost madness of moist kisses,

The youth, the joy, the tresses,

The fragrant limbs of white;

The high heart like a jewel

Alive with subtle fuel,

Lips beautiful and cruel,

Eyes’ incarnated light!

Instead of tears, wild laughter

The old hot passions after,

The houri sweets that dafter

Made flesh and soul a slave!

Enough of tearful sorrows;

Enough of rank to-morrows;

The life that whines and borrows

But memories of the grave!

The grave that breaks no netting

Of care or spint's fretting,

No long, long sweet forgetting

For those who would forget;

And those who stammer by it

Hope of an endless quiet,

Within them voiceless riot

When they and it have met.

And God we pray beseeching,—

But Life with finger reaching,

Stone-stern, remaineth teaching

Our hearts to turn to stone;

Then fain are we to follow

The last, lorn, soaring swallow

Past bourns of holt and hollow

Forevermore alone.