I DREAMED I wove a shroud of flowers
For one who loved me young,
My playmate in the childish bowers
Where my first songs were sung;
I dreamed the words, I dreamed the flowers,
And thus the dirge was sung. —

" There was a boy, a lovely child,
Who loved me long ago;
I found him in the lonesome wild
Where buds of boyhood blow;
I loved him in the flowering wild,
And laid him in the snow.

" Many years hath he been gone
Where shades of beauty fare;
They are few who think upon
The road that he goes there;
He put away the sun; alone
He went to wander there.

" I laid his body in the snow,
That was a living flower;
We were two buds that love made blow
The self-same hour;
And I had many years to grow,
And he an hour.

" Violets, that were his eyes;
Roses that his kisses were;
Breath of jasmine be his sighs,
And his tears be myrrh!
Every flower that soonest dies
To him minister!

" Many years he travels far
In the flowerless land;
None to honor him there are,
None to understand;
I shut my laurel, leaf and star,
In his dear hand. " —

Oh, is it that eternity
Hath in my dark flesh sprung?
Forty winters now there be
Since he I loved was young.
Oh, had, unknown, perpetually,
Spirit to spirit clung?