My life is like the summer rose,
That opens to the morning sky,
But, ere the shades of evening close,
Is scattered on the ground—to die!
Yet on the rose’s humble bed
The sweetest dews of night are shed,
As if she wept the waste to see—
But none shall weep a tear for me!
My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles...
Written on the Road between Florence and Pisa
OH, talk not to me of a name great in story;
The days of our youth are the days of our glory,
And the myrtle and ivy of sweet two-and-twenty
Are worth all your laurels, though ever so plenty.
What are garlands and crowns to the brow that is wrinkled?
’T is but as a dead flower with May-dew...
THE Sun is warm, the sky is clear,
The waves are dancing fast and bright,
Blue isles and snowy mountains wear
The purple noon’s transparent light:
The breath of the moist air is light
Around its unexpanded buds;
Like many a voice of one delight,—
The winds’, the birds’, the ocean-floods’,—
The City’s voice itself...
