I AM happy with her I love,
In a circle of charmed repose;
My soul leaps up to follow her feet
Wherever my darling goes;
Whether to roam through the garden walks,
Or pace the sands by the sea;--
There's never shadow of doubt or fear
Brooding 'twixt her and me:--
But through memory's twilight mists,
Sometimes, I own, in sooth,
Falters the face of one I loved
In the fervent years of youth;--
The soft pathetic brow is there,
With its glimmer and glance of golden hair,
And scarcely shadowed by death's eclipse
The delicate curve of the faultless lips,
The tremulous, tender lips I kissed,
So coyly raised at the sunset tryst,
As we stood from the restless world apart,
'Mid the whispering foliage, heart to heart,
In the fair, far years of youth.
Yet, the vision is pure as heaven,
Untouched by a hint of strife
From the passion that moved itself to sleep,
On the morning strand of life;
And I know that my living Love would feel
The tremor of ruthful tears,
If I told of the sweetness and hope that drooped,
So soon in the vanished years:
She would not banish the phantom sad
Of a beauty discrowned and low;--
Can jealousy rest in the rose's breast
Of a lily under the snow?
Can the passion so warm and strong to-day
Envy a ghost from the cypress shades
For an hour astray?
Or, the love that waned like a blighted May,
In the dead days, long ago,
Ah! long, how long ago!
