Classic Poem

TWO SISTERS, (A AND B)

(A) How much this garden now has lost,
And kept, of all we long had known,
Its wall is sound, and on the ground
Still reaches on this walk of stone;
And there's the cypress, bending slim,
Beside the spring with rocky brim.

(B) We miss, indeed, some flow'rs we knew,
Along the wall, or winding walks;
The rose and stocks, and hollyhocks,
And milk-white pinks, with grey-blue stalks;
But still the walnut tree o'erspreads
The ground where once it screen'd our heads.

(A) These box-bushes that once we trimm'd
Like table tops, or tipp'd like spears,
Are now grown free, and each a tree
With longer growth of our past years;
But still the grape vine hangs its leaves
About the wall below the eaves.

(B) Dear Alice, aye, on twenty years
Of maiden life, she now has flown;
And oh! that she were here to see
What then she took to be her own,
The things in which we had a right,
Before we all at last took flight.

(A) As here on this grey bench of stone
We sat the while the moon, all white,
Might seem to stop behind the top
Of yonder cypress, waving light —
How softly, then, its shade, awhile,
Would play about her kindly smile!