The Evanescent Beautiful

Day after day, young with eternal beauty,
Pays flowery duty to the month and clime;
Night after night erects a vasty portal
Of stars immortal for the march of Time.

But where are now the glory and the rapture,
That once did capture me in cloud and stream?
Where now the joy, that was both speech and silence?
Where the beguilance that was fact and dream?

I know that Earth and Heaven are as golden
As they of olden made me feel and see;
Not in themselves is lacking aught of power
Through star and flower--something’s lost in me.

“Return! return!” I cry, “O visions vanished,
O voices banished, to my soul again!"--
The near Earth blossoms and the far skies glisten,
I look and listen, but, alas! in vain.