"Gains for all Our Losses"

Out of the day and night

A joy has taken flight;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more-Oh, never more!

1821. 1824.

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

"THERE ARE GAINS FOR ALL OUR LOSSES"

1880.

THERE are gains for all losses,
There are balms for all our pain:
But when youth, the dream, departs,
It takes something from our hearts,
And it never comes again.

We are stronger, and are better,
Under manhood's sterner reign:
Still we feel that something sweet
Followed youth, with flying feet,
And will never come again.

Something beautiful is vanished,
And we sigh for it in vain:
We behold it everywhere,
On the earth, and in the air,
But it never comes again.

Richard Henry Stoddard.

“IN A DREAR-NIGHTED

DECEMBER'

IN a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:

The north cannot undo them,

With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;

But with a sweet forgetting,

They stay their crystal fretting,

Never, never petting

About the frozen time.

8

16

Ah! would 't were so with many

1848.

A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writhed not at passèd joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbèd sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.

24

John Keats.

66

"I REMEMBER, I REMEMBER'

I REMEMBER, I remember,

The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon,
Nor brought too long a day,
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups,
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday,-
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember,

Where I was used to swing,

And thought the air must rush as fresh

To swallows on the wing;

My spirit flew in feathers then,

That is so heavy now,

And summer pools could hardly cool

The fever on my brow!

8

16

24

1826.

I remember, I remember,

The fir-trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,

But now 't is little joy

To know I'm farther off from Heav'n
Than when I was a boy.

32

Thomas Hood.

THOU LINGERING STAR

THOU ling'ring star with less'ning ray,
That lov'st to greet the early morn,

Again thou usher'st in the day

My Mary from my soul was torn.

O Mary, dear departed shade!

Where is thy place of blissful rest?

See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 8

That sacred hour can I forget,

Can I forget the hallow'd grove,

Where, by the winding Ayr, we met
To live one day of parting love?

Eternity cannot efface

Those records dear of transports past,

Thy image at our last embrace

Ah! little thought we 't was our last!

16

"Oft, in the Stilly Night

Ayr, gurgling, kiss'd his pebbled shore,

O'erhung with wild woods thickening green;
The fragrant birch and hawthorn hoar
'Twin'd amorous round the raptur'd scene;
The flowers sprang wanton to be prest,
The birds sang love on every spray,
Till too, too soon, the glowing west
Proclaim'd the speed of wingèd day.

Still o'er these scenes my mem'ry wakes,
And fondly broods with miser-care.
Time but th' impression stronger makes,
As streams their channels deeper wear.
O Mary, dear departed shade!

Where is thy place of blissful rest?
See'st thou thy lover lowly laid?

24

Hear'st thou the groans that rend his breast? 32

1790.

Robert Burns.

"OFT, IN THE STILLY NIGHT"

OFT, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me;

The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,

Now dimmed and gone,

The cheerful hearts now broken!