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JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

Life's brightest memories around you cling.
    Child, girl, and woman, I have loved you long.
My friend, my poet, if I too may sing,
    To you is dedicate my wreath of song.

Yet it should be of fairer flowers than grow
    Within my garden wall. This wreath I twine
In Beauty's fields, where deathless blossoms glow,
    The hand that gathers them alone is mine.