“ How cold and wan the Present lowers1
O my true Love ! around us twain ;2
How little of the Past is ours !3
How changed the friends who yet remain.4
“ We cannot without envying view5
The eyes with twenty summers gay,6
For eyes, ’neath which our childhood grew,7
Have long since passed from earth away.8
“ Each hour still steals our youth ; alas !9
No hour will e’er the theft restore ;10
There’s but one thing that will not pass,—11
The heart I loved thee with of yore.12
“ That heart which plays in life its part,13
With love elate, with loss forlorn,14
Is still—through all—the child’s pure heart15
My mother gave when I was born.16
“ That heart, where nothing new can light,17
Where old thoughts draw their cherish’d breath,18
It loves thee, dear, with all the might19
That Life can wield in strife with Death.20
“ If it of Death the conqueror be,21
If there’s in Man some nobler part22
That wins him Immortality,23
Then thou hast, Love ! that deathless heart.”24