And all the promise boyhood made
Has proved the desert of my life.

O, fragrant woods of happy times,
Fair children of the glowing days,
How sweet the music of your lays
Is mingled into fairy chimes!
Ye lisp again the songs of yore,
The stories of my infant years,
And throw a sweeter cadence o'er
My hoary sorrows and my tears!




LOVE.


Angelic theme of ancient lays!
By Doric hills, Athenian vales,
The nations bound thy brows with bays
And fanned thy cheeks with scented gales;
While golden lamps illumed thy shrines
Beside the Tiber and the Po,
Till anthems thine were taught to flow
Along the Alps and Appenines.

The souls of sages and of slaves
Were faithful servants unto thee,
Whose rapture soothed the Grecian waves,