Meseems I should be shedding The heart's-tears from my eyes, The day will keep recalling The time of our good-byes:
I knew that you were dying And I must pass away, Oh I was the waning summer, And you were the wood's decay.
Those days are long departed, Gone where the dead dreams are, Since we two children started To look for the morning star.
We asked our way of the swallow In his language that we knew, We were sad we could not follow So swift the blue bird flew.
We set our wherry drifting Between the poplar trees, And the banks of meadows shifting Were the shores of unknown seas.
We talked of the white snow prairies That lie by the Northern lights, And of woodlands where the fairies Are seen in the moonlit nights.
Till one long day was over And we grew too tired to roam, And through the corn and clover We slowly wandered home.
Ah child! with love and laughter We had journeyed out so far; We who went in the big years after To look for another star;
But I go unbefriended Through wind and rain and foam,-- One day was hardly ended When the angel took you home.
There was a night when you and I Looked up from where we lay, When we were children, and the sky Was not so far away.
We looked toward the deep dark blue Beyond our window bars, And into all our dreaming drew The spirit of the stars.
We did not see the world asleep-- We were already there! We did not find the way so steep To climb that starry stair.
And faint at first and fitfully, Then sweet and shrill and near, We heard the eternal harmony That only angels hear;
And many a hue of many a gem We found for you to wear, And many a shining diadem To bind about your hair;
We saw beneath us faint and far The little cloudlets strewn, And I became a wandering star, And you became my moon.
Ah! have you found our starry skies? Where are you all the years? Oh, moon of many memories! Oh, star of many tears!
Beautiful fisherman's daughter, Steer in your bark to the land! Come down to me over the water And talk to me hand in hand! Lay here on my heart those tresses, For look, what have you to fear Who are bold with the sea's caresses Every day in the year? My heart is at one with the deep In its storm, in its ebb and flow, And ah! There are pearls asleep In cavernous depths below.