Nay, Blame Me Not; I Might Have Spared Your Patience Many A Trivial Verse, Yet These My Earlier Welcome Shared, So, Let The Better Shield The Worse. And Some Might Say, "Those Ruder Songs Had Freshness Which The New Have Lost; To Spring The Opening Leaf Belongs, The Chestnut-Burs Await The Frost." When Those I Wrote, My Locks Were Brown, When These I Write - Ah, Well A-Day! The Autumn Thistle'S Silvery Down Is Not The Purple Bloom Of May. Go, Little Book, Whose Pages Hold Those Garnered Years In Loving Trust; How Long Before Your Blue And Gold Shall Fade And Whiten In The Dust? O Sexton Of The Alcoved Tomb, Where Souls In Leathern Cerements Lie, Tell Me Each Living Poet'S Doom! How Long Before His Book Shall Die? It Matters Little, Soon Or Late, A Day, A Month, A Year, An Age, - I Read Oblivion In Its Date, And Finis On Its Title-Page. Before We Sighed, Our Griefs Were Told; Before We Smiled, Our Joys Were Sung; And All Our Passions Shaped Of Old In Accents Lost To Mortal Tongue. In Vain A Fresher Mould We Seek, - Can All The Varied Phrases Tell That Babel'S Wandering Children Speak How Thrushes Sing Or Lilacs Smell? Caged In The Poet'S Lonely Heart, Love Wastes Unheard Its Tenderest Tone; The Soul That Sings Must Dwell Apart, Its Inward Melodies Unknown. Deal Gently With Us, Ye Who Read Our Largest Hope Is Unfulfilled, - The Promise Still Outruns The Deed, - The Tower, But Not The Spire, We Build. Our Whitest Pearl We Never Find; Our Ripest Fruit We Never Reach; The Flowering Moments Of The Mind Drop Half Their Petals In Our Speech. These Are My Blossoms; If They Wear One Streak Of Morn Or Evening'S Glow, Accept Them; But To Me More Fair The Buds Of Song That Never Blow. April 8, 1862.