О! I care not that my earthly lot

        Hath little of Earth in it,

That years of love have been forgot

        In the fever of a minute:

I heed not that the desolate

        Are happier, sweet, than I,

But that you meddle with my fate

        Who am a passer by.

It is not that my founts of bliss

        Are fushing – strange! with tears —

Or that the thrill of a single kiss

        Hath palsied many years —

’Tis not that the flowers of twenty springs

        Which have wither’d as they rose

Lie dead on my heart-strings

        With the weigth of an age of snows.

Not that the grass – O! may it thrive! —

        On my grave is growing or grown —

But that, while I am dead yet alive

        I cannot be, lady, alone.