How strange to know that youth is ours! That do we choose a world of flowers And sunlight waiting to our hand Is calling for some gladder land, So easy to attain, yet lo! We drift amid the mist and woe Of winter on the Zuyder Zee.
Is there a subtle charm, when sad Despairing nature makes the glad Rejoicing spirit pause to think, Of those dim depths to which may sink The soul immortal? Where the mind May grow as sodden as a wind That dies upon the Zuyder Zee?
When all our loving and our will To love for ever can't fulfil Love's promises for age and death? That like a hushed, unwholesome breath, From off the marshes in the night Steals forth, and all our past delight Is colder than the Zuyder Zee?
The very thought that death is near Perchance makes life seem doubly dear, And love more urgent, since they two May some day fade away, and _you_ Become a spectral memory, Devoid of joy! and what of me Oh! wise, world-weary Zuyder Zee?
Your endless depth of stark despair But renders sunlit things more fair, But makes the craving heart more strong To grasp its pleasures, short or long, While yet it is To-day, nor wait Upon the will of doubtful fate, Lest all emotion rendered numb With long suppression should become As you are, soulless Zuyder Zee!
The thought of you has filled the night with wonder, The dawn with praise, Till all my senses thrill, like roses under The morning's rays.
This love of ours has clad with new-found splendour The hills and streams, No forest glade but sighs of vast surrender, In noontide dreams,
No star in heaven but grants a starry lover Some tender boon, No drifting cloud but longs to clasp and cover His lady Moon.
No song of bird that is not song of mating, In sylvan shade, No sigh of wind that is not sigh of waiting For bliss delayed.
The world itself a garden, where we wander 'Mid passion flowers, Or pause to kiss a while, and fondly ponder This joy of ours.
Oh! why let all these wingèd days slip past us! Will you not give me leave with those dear eyes, To taste the sweets of our new paradise, Beyond the outer dark where fate has cast us?
Must we for ever see the golden portal Yet ne'er in glad abandon enter in? Dear heart, if loving be so great a sin Why have the gods decreed that man be mortal!