Lines (When youthful faith has fled) / John Gibson Lockhart

Lines

When youthful faith has fled,
   Of loving take thy leave;
Be constant to the dead —
   The dead cannot deceive.

Sweet modest flowers of spring,
   How fleet your balmy day!
And man's brief year can bring
   No secondary May.

No earthly burst again
   Of gladness out of gloom;
Fond hope and vision vain,
   Ungrateful to the tomb!

But 'tis an old belief,
   That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief,
   Dear friends will meet once more.

Beyond the sphere of time,
   And sin, and fate's control,
Serene in changeless prime
   Of body and of soul.

That creed I fain would keep,
   That hope I'll not forego;
Eternal be the sleep,
   Unless to waken so.

~~
John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854)
from the Oxford Book of Victorian Verse, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

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