Once when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung. Each questi… - Richard Henry Stoddard

Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands,
Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands,
Silent above the flowers, her children lost,
Slain by the arrows of the early frost.

Gains for all our losses

There are gains for all our losses
There are balms for all our pains
But when youth the dream departs
It takes some thing from our hearts
And never comes again

We are stronger and are better
Under manhood’s sterner reign
Still we feel that some thing sweet
Followed youth with flying feet
And will never come again.

Some thing beautiful has vanished
And we sigh for it in vain
We behold it every where — —
On the earth and in the air — —
But it never comes again.

It beckons, I follow. Good by to the light!
I am going, oh! whither? Out into the night!