Great trees that o'er us grow-- Green leaves that gather round them--the fresh hues, That tell of fruit, and blossoms yet to blow, Opening fond bosoms to the embracing dews; These, now so bright, That deck the slopes about thy childhood's home, And seem, in long duration, to thy sight, As they had promise of perpetual bloom; So linked with all The first dear throbs of feeling in thy heart, When, at the dawn of summer and of fall, Thou weptst the leaf that must so soon depart! What had all these, Of frail, deciduous nature, to persuade, Howe'er their sweets might charm, and beauty please, The memories that their own could never aid? They kept no tale-- No solemn history of the fruitful hour; The lover's promise, the beloved one's wail-- To wake the dead leaf in each lonely bower! The autumn breath O'erthrew each frail memorial of their past; And every token was resigned to death, In the first summons of the northern blast. They nourished naught That to the chain of moral being binds The recollections of the once gay spot, And its sweet offices, to future minds. Thou may'st repair-- Thou, who hast loved in summer-eve to glide With her whom thou hast still beheld as fair, When she no longer wandered by thy side. And thou wilt weep Each altered aspect of that happiest home, Which saw the joys its memories could not keep, Save by the sympathy which shares their doom. Thus Ruin stands For Ruin--and the wreck of favorite things, To him who o'er the waste but wrings his hands, Proofs of the _fall_, and not the spring-time brings. Ah! who will weep, In after seasons, when thou too art gone, Within this grot, where shadowy memories keep Their watch above the realm they keep alone? Who will lament, In fruitless tears, that she the dear one died, And thy surviving heart, in languishment, Soon sought the grave and withered at her side? A newer bright Makes young the woods--and bowers that not to thee Brought fruit or blossom, triumph in the sight Of those who naught but fruit and blossom see; To whom no voice Whispers, that through the loved one's would the root Of that exulting shrub, with happiest choice, Has gone, with none its passage to dispute. While thine own heart, In neighboring hillock, conscious, it may be-- Quivers to see the fibres rend and part The fair white breast which was so dear to thee. Of all the past, That precious history of thy love and youth, When not a cloud thy happy dawn o'ercast, When all thou felt'st was joy, thou saw'st was truth;