All down the river's stretch I float,
⁠While song-birds carol in the air;
Sweet ripples swirl about my boat,
⁠And all the wakening world is fair.

The world is fair: I should be glad
⁠When Nature showers her gifts on me,
Ah me! my portion is the sad
⁠Sweet bitterness of memory;

And all my world is in one face,
⁠One face upon the distant shore,
That looks and longs for me, whose place
⁠Is with the live who live no more.

For surely this is death in life,
⁠To know that I can never move
The fates, and that no toil or strife
⁠Can ever win me her I love.

I hear the loud cicalas sing
⁠Upon the river's grassy slope,
And still their ceaseless chirrups ring
⁠Two weary words, "No hope — no hope."

O fond white arms that loved to play
⁠About my neck and soothe my pain,
Will there be nevermore a day
⁠For me to know your touch again?

O soft low voice that loved to tell
⁠Sweet tales to my enraptured ears!
O voice that answered mine so well,
⁠In laughter and in loving tears!

O love, my lost, my only love,
⁠Who make the barren years so slow,
I see you in the skies above,
⁠And in the whirling stream below,

Where all the ripples sound and swell
⁠With all the words you spoke to me,
Till life once more runs smooth and well,
⁠While I am fooled by memory.

Come back, O love, to speak one word,
⁠One little word before I die,
One of the many I have heard
⁠And always hear in memory.

It cannot be. The visions wane
⁠And pale before reality;
The world is cold and bare again —
⁠There is no joy in memory.

Yet could I only this believe,
⁠That some day in the heaven they dream
We two should meet, I'd cease to grieve,
⁠The heavy time would lightened seem.

Nought see I but this wretched world,
⁠A shore whereon the fierce wind drives
Weird wrecks upon the shingle hurled,
⁠The jetsam of divided lives.

What hard and weary punishment
⁠The awful fates contrive for men:
They will not let me give, content.
⁠All days of now for one of them!

Ah no! Where'er I pass my years,
⁠That darken on the deathward slope,
Those words will echo in mine ears,
⁠Those weary words, "No hope — no hope!"

Still cradled on the waters clear
⁠The mirror of the dropping sun,
I slowly float, and strangely dear
⁠Appear the days that now are done.

The sunset breezes lightly kiss
⁠The treetops with their last low breath;
And there is happiness in this,
⁠The happiness that comes with death.

They tower in the waning light
⁠Those shadowy trees that stud the dell,
And through the softly opening night
⁠Peals far away the evening bell.

The birds have hushed their noise above,
⁠All through the day they sang their best;
They interchange last notes of love,
⁠And sink with all the world to rest.

A strange and sweetly solemn mirth
⁠Is waiting on the dying day;
Peace holds secure upon the earth
⁠And in my weary heart her sway;

As like a worn-out child I lie,
⁠To slumber rocked on Nature's breast,
And the night-wind comes sighing by
⁠With faintly whispered words of rest.

Faster than petals fall on windy days
⁠From ruined roses,
Hope after hope falls fluttering, and decays,
⁠Ere the year closes.

For little hopes, that open but to die,
⁠And little pleasures,
Divide the long, sad year, that labors by,
⁠Into short measures.

Yea, let them go! our day-lived hopes are not
⁠The life we cherish;
Love lives, till disappointments are forgot,
⁠And sorrows perish.

On withered boughs, where still the old leaf clings,
⁠New leaves come never;
And in the heart, where hope hangs faded, springs
⁠No new endeavor.