Serene, I fold my hands and wait
⁠Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea;
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,
⁠For lo! my own shall come to me.

I stay my haste, I make delays,
⁠For what avails this eager pace?
I stand amid the eternal ways,
⁠And what is mine shall know my face.

Asleep, awake, by night or day,
⁠The friends I seek are seeking me;
No wind can drive my hark astray,
⁠Nor change the tide of destiny.

What matter if I stand alone?
⁠I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it has sown,
⁠And garner up its fruit of tears.

The waters know their own and draw
⁠The brook that springs in yonder height,
So flows the good with equal law
⁠Unto the soul of pure delight.

The stars come nightly to the sky;
⁠The tidal wave unto the sea;
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high,
⁠Can keep my own away from me.

I remember a morn behind the mill,
⁠⁠When blackbirds sang,
⁠⁠And sheep-bells rang,
Far off, and all things else were still,
⁠⁠But the rising bream
⁠⁠In the pictured stream,
And the noise of water about the mill.

I remember a maid in her sweet youth,
⁠⁠Whose gentle days
⁠⁠In village ways
Were passed in simple works of truth;
⁠⁠The summer's day
⁠⁠Sped fast away
In a dream of love, in the time of youth.

I remember the spring in garb of green,
⁠⁠The light heart glee
⁠⁠That came to me
With the smile of my love at seventeen;
⁠⁠Her laugh that went
⁠⁠Like woodland scent
To my soul — that time on the daisied green.

And though I know the days are spent,
⁠⁠That love was lost
⁠⁠When came the frost
At summer's close of my content,
⁠⁠Yet some joy stays
⁠⁠In winter days,
And brings its joyous complement.

When I am dead, my dearest,
⁠Sing no sad song for me;
Plant no roses at my head,
⁠Nor shady cypress-tree;
Be the green grass above me
⁠With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
⁠And if thou wilt, forget.

I shall not see the shadows,
⁠I shall not feel the rain,
I shall not hear the nightingale
⁠Sing on, as if in pain;
And dreaming through the twilight
⁠That doth not rise or set,
Haply I may remember,
⁠And haply I may forget.

Here is the same old mansion,
⁠With its quaint moss-covered towers,
And the summer sunlight sleeping
⁠On the gleam of the garden flowers;

And the wild dove, far in the fir-wood,
⁠Cooing in monotone;
And the stately, silent courtyard,
⁠With its antique dial-stone.

The swallows have come as of yore, lad,
⁠From over the sunny sea,
And the cup of the lily echoes
⁠To the hum of the wandering bee.

The lark, in its silvery treble,
⁠Sings up in the deep-blue sky;
But the house is not as it was, lad,
⁠In those dear old days gone by.

'Twas here that her garments rustled,
⁠Like music amidst the flowers;
And her low, sweet, rippling laughter
⁠Made richer the rose-wreathed bowers.

But now, in its noontide brightness,
⁠The place seems cold and dead;
And it lies like a form of beauty
⁠When the light of the soul has fled.

All hushed is each lonely chamber,
⁠That echoed to songs of old;
The chairs are now all vacant,
⁠And the hearths are dark and cold.

Yet the joys I had here of yore, lad,
⁠No heart but my own can know;
And the glimpses of heaven she gave me
⁠In this dear home long ago.

But they went one eve, when she left me,
⁠Mid the balm of the summer air;
There's a grave far over the hills, lad —
⁠The home of my heart is there.