Thoughts as sweet as summer roses,
And with music's dreamiest closes,
Dying faintly into silence, from the full and ringing strain
That through all my spirit sounded with a rapture half of pain.

'How I longed those words to utter
That within my heart would flutter,
Beating wild against their prison, as its walls they'd burst in twain:
But it broke not, throbbing only,
Aching in a silence lonely,
Till my very life was flooded with a wild, delicious pain;
Kindled with a blaze illuming all the chambers of my brain!

'And to me death had been glorious,
If those burning words, victorious,
Had at last surged o'er their prison, bearing my departing soul!
Gladly were my heart's blood given,
If those bonds I might have riven;
If, with every crimson lifedrop that from out my full heart stole,
I might hear that swelling chorus upward in its glory roll.

'Sad and low my heart is beating!
Each pulsation still repeating
'All in vain those eager longings, all in vain that burning prayer.
See the breezes, 'mid the bowers,
Sigh above the fragrant flowers,
And from out those drooping roses, their heart-folded sweetness bear--
But no heaven-sent wind shall whisper thy soul-breathings to the air.'

'But upon my darkened vision