The Past

Wilt thou forget the happy hours

Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers,

Heaping over their corpses cold

Blossoms and leaves, instead of mould?

      Blossoms which were the joys that fell,

            And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

Forget the dead, the past? Oh, yet

There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,

Memories that make the heart a tomb,

Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,

      And with ghastly whispers tell

            That joy, once lost, is pain.