O! 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 gushing—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 weight 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.