Classic Poem

Ah ! why should pity wet my bier,
And give my corse her tardy tear?
And the same eye that coldly slew me,
With tears untimely warm bedew me?
Alas! for harm is fleet as wind,
And healing ever lags behind.

Perhaps, when life well nigh is spent,
She'll faintly smile a sad consent,—
And, just before she sees me die,
Will leave a kind repentant sigh:
For sigh of ruth—Oh, wayward fate!—
Will ever come—and come too late.

She cannot undo what is done;
For, if a smile were like the sun,
And sighs more sweet than gales that creep
O'er rosy beds where fairies sleep,
And every tear like summer rain
To thirsty fields—'twere all in vain.

For never sun so bright was seen
Could make a leaf that's sere be green;
Nor spicy gale, nor April shower,
Restore to bloom a faded flower:
Thus sun, and wind, and balmy rain,
And smiles, and sighs, and tears, are vain.