If I Should Go Away

If I Should Go Away

If I should go away, and ne'er return, -
If I should find a home beneath a clime
That grows the golden orange and the lime
And all the fruits the heated tropics burn, -
Would you recall the vanished hours, the time,
When, in the hope of youth's all blissful prime,
You bent not on me glances cold and stern,
But deemed my way was holy, not a crime?

Perhaps. We do not prize, I know, alway,

The tender flower that lifts its modest head
To kisses of the butterfly and bee,
Rejoining in its nectar scented bed,
Until the bleak winds of the land or sea

Caress it, and it die, with the fading day.

T. Thomas Fortune

5:10, p. 2

1891.11.28