And thou art dead, as young and fair 
                                   As aught of mortal birth;
                                   And form so soft, and charms so rare,
                                   Too soon returned to Earth!
                                   Though Earth received them in her bed,
                                   And over the spot the crowd may tread
                                   In carelessness or mirth,
                                   There is an eye which could not brook
                                   A moment on that grave to look.
                                   
                                   I will not ask where thou liest low,
                                   Nor gaze upon the spot;
                                   There flowers or weeds at will may grow,
                                   So I behold them not:
                                   It is enough for me to prove
                                   That what I loved, and long must love,
                                   Like common earth can rot;
                                   To me there needs no stone to tell,
                                   'T is Nothing that I loved so well.
                                   
                                   Yet did I love thee to the last
                                   As fervently as thou,
                                   Who didst not change through all the past,
                                   And canst not alter now.
                                   The love where Death has set his seal,
                                   Nor age can chill, nor rival steal,
                                   Nor falsehood disavow:
                                   And, what were worse, thou canst not see
                                   Or wrong, or change, or fault in me.
                                   
                                   The better days of life were ours;
                                   The worst can be but mine:
                                   The sun that cheers, the storm that lowers,
                                   Shall never more be thine.
                                   The silence of that dreamless sleep
                                   I envy now too much to weep;
                                   Nor need I to repine
                                   That all those charms have passed away,
                                   
                                   I might have watched through long decay.
                                   The flower in ripened bloom unmatched
                                   Must fall the earliest prey;
                                   Though by no hand untimely snatched,
                                   The leaves must drop away:
                                   And yet it were a greater grief
                                   To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
                                   Than see it plucked to-day;
                                   Since earthly eye but ill can bear
                                   To trace the change to foul from fair.
                                   
                                   I know not if I could have borne
                                   To see thy beauties fade;
                                   The night that followed such a morn
                                   Had worn a deeper shade:
                                   Thy day without a cloud hath passed,
                                   And thou wert lovely to the last,
                                   Extinguished, not decay'd;
                                   As stars that shoot along the sky
                                   Shine brightest as they fall from high.
                                   
                                   As once I wept, if I could weep,
                                   My tears might well be shed,
                                   To think I was not near to keep
                                   One vigil over thy bed;
                                   To gaze, how fondly! on thy face,
                                   To fold thee in a faint embrace,
                                   Uphold thy drooping head;
                                   And show that love, however vain,
                                   Nor thou nor I can feel again.
                                   
                                   Yet how much less it were to gain,
                                   Though thou hast left me free,
                                   The loveliest things that still remain,
                                   Than thus remember thee!
                                   The all of thine that cannot die
                                   Through dark and dread Eternity
                                   Returns again to me,
                                   And more thy buried love endears
                                   Than aught except its living years. 
     
                                   
                                   NOTE: Old spelling has been corrected to make
                                   the text more convenient for the modern eye.

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