IV.

I remember low on the water

They hung from the dripping moss,

In the broken shrine of some streamgod’ s daughter

Where the north and south roads cross;

And I plucked some sprays for my love to wear,

Some tangled sprays of maidenhair.

So you went north with the swallow

Away from this southern shore,

And the summers pass, and the winters follow,

And the years, but you come no more,

You have roses now in your breast to wear,

And you have forgotten the maidenhair.

And the sound of the echoing laughter,

The songs that we used to sing,

To remember these in the years long after

May seem but a foolish thing,—

Yet I know to me they are always fair

My withered sprays of maidenhair.