Like thee I joyed alone to range Amid the beautiful and bright, A thing like them of love and light— Like thee my spirit had its change. The spell was wove! It thundered out In many a wild and bitter curse— And thenceforth I was hurl’d about Hopeless amid the universe. Long years! oh! how your shadows press My brow in very weariness: Here! here ye stretch and ever gloom Like funeral-foliage of the tomb, Whose leaves—the favorites of pain Must ever life from sorrow gain. Long years! long years! I feel again Your star-eyed hopes around me glow Bright as the plumage of a train Of pilgrim-angels furled below. We are together: Ila, see The light of heaven’s own heraldry— And hark!—the evening breeze is here; His silver lips no longer mute,— He breathes—a minstrel-worshipper— An avè from his leafy lute: Shall we not join him? Dearest, press Thy lip to mine, while, as of old, We hear with love’s sweet tenderness That glorious vesper music rolled. We are together in those bowers Glad as the rosy-footed hours And all as pure.—I see her now A creature less of earth than skies, With day’s pure sunshine on her brow And heaven’s own midnight in her eyes. And thus we trod the path of life, Without nor cloud, nor grief, nor strife— Like pensile stars whose golden light Meets on the sable bridge of night And glows with such a wedded beam In calm or stormy weather, That men when looking upwards deem They are but one, for thus they seem, So close they shine together. Ha! whence this change? My Ila! why That icy mien and tearful eye? No more for me thou cullest the flow’r;— No more with me thou seekest the bow’r;— No more thy sweet lips press my own;— No more thy warm hands link with mine, When Daylight, stooping from his throne, Has furl’d his wing by evening’s shrine.