Classic Poem

The crimson of the maple trees
Is lighted by the moon's soft glow;
Oh, nights like this, and things like these,
Bring back a dream of long ago.
For on an eve as sweet as this —
Upon this bank — beneath this tree —
My lips, in love's impassioned kiss,
Met those of Ulalie.

Softly as now the dewdrops burned
In the flushed bosoms of the flowers,
Backward almost seems time to have turned
The golden axis of the hours,
Till, cold as ocean's beaten surf,
Beneath these trailing boughs, I see
The white cross and the faded turf
Above lost Ulalie.