‘Do you remember me? or are you proud?’

I warm’d both hands before the fire of life;It sinks, and I am ready to depart.

And how much narrower is the stageAllotted us to play the sage!But when we play the fool, how wideThe theatre expands! beside,How long the audience sits before us!How many prompters! what a chorus!

Life passes on more rudely fleet,And balmless is its closing day.I wait its close, I court its gloom,But mourn that never must there fallOr on my breast or on my tombThe tear that would have soothed it all.

Fashion and win their nursling with their smiles.But where the land is dim from tyranny,There tiny pleasures occupy the placeOf glories and of duties; as the feetOf fabled faeries when the sun goes downTrip o’er the grass where wrestlers strove by day.Then Justice, call’d the Eternal One above,Is more inconstant than the buoyant formThat burst…

And shake my shoulder, urging me to singAbout the summer days, my loves of old.Alas! alas! is all I can reply.Memory has left with me that name alone,Harmonious name, which other bards may sing,But her bright image in my darkest hourComes back, in vain comes back, call’d or uncall’d.Forgotten are the names of visitorsReady to…

But when my summer days are gone,And my autumnal haste away.‘Can I be always by your side?’No; but the hours you can, you must,Nor rise at Death’s approaching stride,Nor go when dust is gone to dust.

By Jove! I would not give you half-a-crownFor all your poppy-heads and all your down.

And where go forth at morn, at eve, at night,Soft airs, that want the lute to play with them,And softer sighs, that know not what they want;Under a wall, beneath an orange-treeWhose tallest flowers could tell the lowlier onesOf sights in Fiesole right up above,While I was gazing a few paces offAt what they seemed…

Came forth to help thee, with half-open eyes,And trembled every one with still surprise,That the black Spectre should have dared assailTheir beauteous queen and seize her sacred veil.

Is not, I fancy, so like me;You never hold her on your knee.When she came home, the other day,You kiss’d her; but I cannot sayShe kiss’d you first and ran away.

After a longer struggle, in a fightWorthy of Italy, to youth restor’d,Thou, far from home, art sunk beneath the surgeOf the Atlantic; on its shore; in reachOf help; in trust of refuge; sunk with allPrecious on earth to thee … a child, a wife!Proud as thou wert of her, AmericaIs prouder, showing to her sons…

Grant only (and I ask no more),Let love remain that little while.