Classic Poem

I.

THE love that won thee did not speak,
The grief that mourns thee has no tear;
To paint thy virtues both were weak,
To lose them neither well can bear.
In boyhood's hours, 'mid childhood's glee,
And through the long succeeding years
The same, — thy presence were to me
What weeping memory still endears.

II.

Let those with mood more calm than mine,
Describe thy virtues as they will;
It is enough that they were thine,
I've lost them yet I love them still:
I love them still, though now no more
Their presence blesses mortal eye;
They dwell within my bosom's core,
And never sleep and cannot die!

III.

When all of earth that well could fade,
And beauty's sweetest blandishment,
The eye might deem, that then survey'd,
Immortal as omnipotent; —
Were crowded into earth, — there stood,
From all that weeping train apart,
One victim of a hopeless mood,
One keeper of a maddening heart.

IV.

To him the boon of memory came,
The young, the lovely, to restore
Warm, tender, as his bosom's flame,
Immortal as the love it bore!
But vain, though sweet, the boon it brings,
Unless it bids the buried live;
It gives him gleams of heavenly things,
But weeps o'er that it cannot give!