For all these long years after The dream has never died, I still can hear your laughter, Still see you at my side; One lily hiding under The waves of golden hair; I could not choose but wonder, You were so strangely fair.
I keep the flower you braided Among those waves of gold, The leaves are sere and faded, And like our love grown old. Our lives have lain asunder, The years are long, and yet, I could not choose but wonder. I cannot quite forget.
A sweet still night of the vintage time, Where the Rhone goes down to the sea; The distant sound of a midnight chime Comes over the wave to me. Only the hills and the stars o'erhead Bring back dreams of the days long dead, While the Rhone goes down to the sea.
The years are long, and the world is wide, And we all went down to the sea; The ripples splash as we onward glide, And I dream they are here with me-- All lost friends whom we all loved so, In the old mad life of long ago, Who all went down to the sea.
So we passed in the golden days With the summer down to the sea. They wander still over weary ways, And come not again to me. I am here alone with the night wind's sigh, The fading stars, and a dream gone by, And the Rhone going down to the sea.
All through the golden weather Until the autumn fell, Our lives went by together So wildly and so well.--
But autumn's wind uncloses The heart of all your flowers, I think as with the roses, So hath it been with ours.
Like some divided river Your ways and mine will be, --To drift apart for ever, For ever till the sea.
And yet for one word spoken, One whisper of regret, The dream had not been broken And love were with us yet.
The autumn wind goes sighing Through the quivering aspen tree, The swallows will be flying Toward their summer sea; The grapes begin to sweeten On the trellised vine above, And on my brows have beaten The little wings of love. Oh wind if you should meet her You will whisper all I sing! Oh swallow fly to greet her, And bring me word in spring!
Wait not along the shore, they will not come; The suns go down beyond the windy seas, Those weary sails shall never wing them home O'er this white foam; No voice from these On any landward wind that dies among the trees.
Gone south, it may be, rudderless, astray, Gone where the winds and ocean currents bore, Out of all tracks along the sea's highway This many a day, To some far shore Where never wild seas break, or any fierce winds roar.