SOUVENIR

How sweetly sad it is sometimes to hear

Some old loved sound to memory recalled,

To see, an if in dreams, some old dear face,

Some landscape's stretch, some field, some dale, some stream

A memory so sudden, sad and pleasant,

Aught that recalls the days of happy youth.

        Then spring in happy pain the tears that wait,

Those subtle tears that wait on thought, and all -

Field stream and voice - all that we hear or see -

Goes from the sense, adorned with mem’ry’s hand

And merges slowly into dreamy light.

        I wake; alas! by dreams l was betrayed.

Tis but a semblance that l feel and hear

Because the past, alas! cannot return.

These fields are not the fields I knew, these sounds

Are not the sounds I knew: all those are gone,

And all the past - alas! cannot return.