Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1621/Ungathered Love

UNGATHERED LOVE.

When the autumn winds go wailing
Through branches yellow and brown.
When the grey sad light is failing.
And the day is going down, —
I hear the desolate evening sing
Of a Love that bloomed in the early spring,
And which no heart had for gathering.

I and my lover we dwell apart,
We twain may never be one —
We shall never stand heart to heart.
Then what can be said or done.
When winds, and waters, and song-birds sing
Of a Love that bloomed in the early spring.
And which no heart had for gathering?

When day is over and night descends,
And dank mists circle and rise,
I fall asleep, and slumber befriends.
For I dream of April skies.
But I wake to hear the silence sing
Of a Love that bloomed in the early spring,
And which no heart had for gathering.

When the dawn comes in with wind and rain,
And birds awake in the eaves.
And rain-drops smite the window-pane.
And drench the eddying leaves, —
I hear the voice of the daybreak sing
Of a love that bloomed in the early spring.
And which no heart had for gathering.

Philip Bourke Marston
Macmillan's Magazine.