YOUTH, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how….

My heart's celestial histories,
So countless were, could not be told.—
She was a tender child, in this
World of affliction manifold.

She seemed a dawn of pure delight;
She smiled as the flow’rs after rain;
Her stresses were like to the night
Fashioned of darknesses and pain.

I was timid and childlike shy.
I could not but have been this way:
She, to my love chaste as the sky,
Was Herodias and Salomé….

Youth, treasure only gods may keep,
Fleeting from me forever now!
I cannot, when I wish to, weep,
And often cry I know not how….