Читать книгу The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell - James Russell Lowell - Страница 157

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It is a mere wild rosebud,

Quite sallow now, and dry,

Yet there's something wondrous in it,

Some gleams of days gone by,

Dear sights and sounds that are to me

The very moons of memory,

And stir my heart's blood far below

Its short-lived waves of joy and woe.

Lips must fade and roses wither,

All sweet times be o'er;

They only smile, and, murmuring 'Thither!'

Stay with us no more:

And yet ofttimes a look or smile,

Forgotten in a kiss's while,

Years after from the dark will start,

And flash across the trembling heart.

Thou hast given me many roses,

But never one, like this,

O'erfloods both sense and spirit

With such a deep, wild bliss;

We must have instincts that glean up

Sparse drops of this life in the cup,

Whose taste shall give us all that we

Can prove of immortality.

Earth's stablest things are shadows,

And, in the life to come.

Haply some chance-saved trifle

May tell of this old home:

As now sometimes we seem to find,

In a dark crevice of the mind,

Some relic, which, long pondered o'er,

Hints faintly at a life before.