Hah! tears again! dost ask me why The tear upon this burning cheek, The half repressed, yet bursting sigh? The tear, the sigh, themselves must speak; Must tell a tale of by-gone hours, A vision of all fair and bright— When my young path was strewn with flowers, And every throb was of delight. When joys were of each moment’s birth, Nor care, nor doubt, an instant stole From days of ever-changeful mirth, That changeless shone upon the soul. When hopes, that in mist-distance gleaming, In promise e’en outvied the past, Came ever, halcyon heralds seeming, Of peace and bliss for aye to last.
But where is now the sportive wile Of youth—so guileless and so gay— The soul of love, of fire—the smile, That spoke that soul—oh! where are they? Of days that could such joys impart What now remains? Their memory— A cheerless, blasted youth—a heart That breaketh fast, though silently. And those proud hopes so fondly cherished, Have they too proved, like Friendship, breath? Ay, one by one, they all have perished— Yet no—not all—there yet is death! There yet remains to choose some spot, Where, far from man and scorn, to lie— And there, unheeded and forgot, Alone—oh! God—alone to die.
Who talks of dying, while around The earth’s so fair, the sky so bright? With Folly’s wreath let day be crowned, And Mirth and Music rule the night. Another chord—the purple hills Are bowing to the yellow vales— The vales are smiling to the rills— The rills make music for the gales, That with the sunbeams twining hands, Through groves and meads and streams are glancing Adown the lanes, and on the sands Of brave old Ocean madly dancing. And brave old Ocean roareth so His honest laugh, to see those Misses, The pretty flow’rets bending low, As though to shun the wired-god’s kisses.
Kisses—hah! hah!—around this string Of other days what memories twine— Bring, merry comrades, quickly bring Youth-giving and song-making wine. Fill, fill—on the faithful brim Pile up the sparkling flood— Drink, drink, till the living stream Run conqueror through the blood. Drink to the hill, the vale, The stream and its jeweled brink, To the warming ray and the cooling gale, To earth and to ocean drink. Drink to each thing that seems Or loving or glad to be— Nor wait to ask if those joyous beams Be nature’s hypocrisy.