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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  Love’s Young Dream

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

VI. Lovers

Love’s Young Dream

Thomas Moore (1779–1852)

From “Irish Melodies”

O THE DAYS are gone when beauty bright

My heart’s chain wove!

When my dream of life, from morn till night,

Was love, still love!

New hope may bloom,

And days may come,

Of milder, calmer beam,

But there ’s nothing half so sweet in life

As love’s young dream!

O, there ’s nothing half so sweet in life

As love’s young dream!

Though the bard to purer fame may soar,

When wild youth ’s past;

Though he win the wise, who frowned before,

To smile at last;

He ’ll never meet

A joy so sweet

In all his noon of fame

As when first he sung to woman’s ear

His soul-felt flame,

And at every close she blushed to hear

The one loved name!

O, that hallowed form is ne’er forgot,

Which first love traced;

Still it lingering haunts the greenest spot

On memory’s waste!

’T was odor fled

As soon as shed;

’T was morning’s wingèd dream;

’T was a light that ne’er can shine again

On life’s dull stream!

O, ’t was a light that ne’er can shine again

On life’s dull stream!