Coming along by the meadows,
⁠Just after the sun went down,
Watching the gathering shadows
⁠Creep over the hillsides brown;

Coming along in the gloaming,
⁠With never a star in the sky,
My thoughts went a-roaming, a-roaming
⁠Through days that are long gone by;

Days when desire said, "To-morrow,
⁠To-morrow, heart, we'll be gay!"
Days ere the heart heard the sorrow
⁠Which echoes through yesterday.

Life was a goblet burnished
⁠That with love for wine was filled;
The cup is bruised and tarnished,
⁠And the precious wine is spilled.

But to the traveller weary,
⁠Just coming in sight of home,
What does it matter how dreary
⁠The way whereby he has come?

Coming along by the meadows,
⁠And watching the fading day,
Duskier than night's dusky shadows
⁠Fell shadows of yesterday.

In the northern sunset's glimmer
⁠The great bear opened his eyes;
Low in the east a shimmer
⁠Showed where the full moon would rise.

Lights in a window were gleaming,
⁠And some one stood at a gate,
Said, "Why do you stand there dreaming?
⁠And why are you home so late?"

Yesterday's shadow and sorrow
⁠That moment all vanished away!
Here were to-day and to-morrow —
⁠What matter for yesterday?

Some indiscreet Abderite boys,
⁠Within a limpit's hollow,
Offered in laurel-juice blue flies
⁠As victims to Apollo.

The god appeased will bless, they thought,
Our tasks of prose and rhyme;
So they the flitting insects caught,
⁠But lost the flitting time.

When Pedagogue their progress tries,
⁠Nor finds the lesson done,
In vain they plead the sacrifice.
⁠He whips them every one.

True to the promise of thy far-off youth,
When all who loved thee, for thee prophesied
A grand, full life, devoted to the truth,
A noble cause by suffering sanctified.
True to all beauties of the poet-thought
Which made thy youth so eloquent and sweet;
True to all duties which thy manhood brought
To take the room of fancies light and fleet.
True to the steadfast walk and narrow way,
Which thy forefathers of the covenant trod!
True to thy friend in foul or sunny day,
True to thy home, thy country, and thy God;
True to the world, which still is false to thee,
And true to all — as thou art true to me.
True to the vow that bound us in the lane,
That summer evening when the brown bird sang,
Piercing the silence with sweet notes of pain,
While echoes over all the woodland rang.
True to the troth we plighted on that day,
Each to forsake all other for the one;
Cleaving together through the unknown Way,
Till death made void the union then begun.
True to the love brought by a little hand:
True — though the patter of the childish feet
Have passed from earth into the silent land;
Loss hallows love, and love is still complete:
I can lift up mine eyes from teardrops free,
For thou art true to all these things — and me.

The index to a book is small
Compared with what the book contains;
The head, though but a little ball,
Incloses ardent, thoughtful brains.

And drops of rain are little things
That point to oceans in the sky;
And bridegrooms deal in little rings
As symbols of the strongest tie.

And little blades of grass, though small,
All point to life within the earth —
That life, that in this great round ball
Gives spring its sweetest, freshest birth.

A woman's eye is but a bead
Set clear and fair 'neath snowy brow,
And yet it shews the fairest creed
Before which men on earth may bow.

And words are little weakling notes
That vanish like a passing sigh,
And yet they tell our sweetest thoughts,
And have told thoughts that will not die.

So this I send is but a mark
Of grateful thoughts and warm esteem —
Is but a little wav'ring spark
Dropped down from friendship's glowing beam!