 | The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich |  |
I
Between the budding and the falling leaf
Stretch happy skies;
With colors and sweet cries
Of mating birds in uplands and in glades
The world is rife.
Then on a sudden all the music dies,
The color fades.
How fugitive and brief
Is mortal life
Between the budding and the falling leaf!
Stretch happy skies;
With colors and sweet cries
Of mating birds in uplands and in glades
The world is rife.
Then on a sudden all the music dies,
The color fades.
How fugitive and brief
Is mortal life
Between the budding and the falling leaf!
O short-breathed music, dying on the tongue
Ere half the mystic canticle be sung!
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Who, if 't were his to choose, would know again
The bitter sweetness of the lost refrain,
Its rapture, and its pain?
Ere half the mystic canticle be sung!
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Who, if 't were his to choose, would know again
The bitter sweetness of the lost refrain,
Its rapture, and its pain?
| The poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich | |