Leave me not fading in these weeds of care, Whose flowers are silvered hair!-- Have I not loved thee long, Though my young lips have often done thee wrong And vexed thy heaven-tuned ear with careless song? Ah, wilt thou yet return, Bearing thy rose-hued torch, and bid thine altar burn? Come to me!--I will flood thy silent shrine With my soul's sacred wine, And heap thy marble floors As the wild spice-trees waste their fragrant stores In leafy islands walled with madrepores And lapped in Orient seas, When all their feathery palms toss, plume-like, in the breeze. Come to me!--thou shalt feed on honeyed words, Sweeter than song of birds;-- No wailing bulbul's throat, No melting dulcimer's melodious note, When o'er the midnight wave its murmurs float, Thy ravished sense might soothe With flow so liquid-soft, with strain so velvet-smooth. Thou shalt be decked with jewels, like a queen, Sought in those bowers of green Where loop the clustered vines And the close-clinging dulcamara twines,-- Pure pearls of Maydew where the moonlight shines, And Summer's fruited gems, And coral pendants shorn from Autumn's berried stems. Sit by me drifting on the sleepy waves,-- Or stretched by grass-grown graves, Whose gray, high-shouldered stones, Carved with old names Life's time-worn roll disowns, Lean, lichen-spotted, o'er the crumbled bones Still slumbering where they lay While the sad Pilgrim watched to scare the wolf away! Spread o'er my couch thy visionary wing! Still let me dream and sing,-- Dream of that winding shore Where scarlet cardinals bloom,--for me no more,-- The stream with heaven beneath its liquid floor, And clustering nenuphars Sprinkling its mirrored blue like golden-chaliced stars! Come while their balms the linden-blossoms shed!-- Come while the rose is red,-- While blue-eyed Summer smiles O'er the green ripples round yon sunken piles Washed by the moon-wave warm from Indian isles, And on the sultry air The chestnuts spread their palms like holy men in prayer! Oh, for thy burning lips to fire my brain With thrills of wild sweet pain!-- On life's autumnal blast, Like shrivelled leaves, youth's passion-flowers are cast,-- Once loving thee, we love thee to the last!-- Behold thy new-decked shrine, And hear once more the voice that breathed "Forever thine!" THE TRUSTEE'S LAMENT. _Per aspera ad astra._ (SCENE.--Outside the gate of the Astronomical Observatory at Albany.) There was a time when I was blest; The stars might rise in East or West With all their sines and wonders; I cared for neither great nor small, As pointedly unmoved by all As, on the top of steeple tall, A lightning-rod at thunders.