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"Nor think by older
hearts forgotten quite
Love's whispered words; youth's sweet and strange delight!
They live - though after-memories fade away;
They live - to cheer life's slow declining day;
Haunting the widow by her lonely hearth,
As, meekly smiling at her children's mirth,
She spreads her fair thin hands towards the fire,
To seek the warmth their slackened veins require:
Or gladdening her to whom Heaven's mercy spares
Her old companion with his silver hairs;
And while he dozes - changed, and dull, and weak -
And his hushed grandchild signs, but dares not speak, -
Bidding her watch, with many a tender smile,
The withered form which slumbers all the while.
"Yes! sweet the voice of those we loved! the tone
Which cheers our memory as we sit alone,
And will not leave us; the o'er-mastering force,
Whose under-current's strange and hidden course
Bids some chance word, by colder hearts forgot,
Return - and still return - yet weary not
The ear which wooes its sameness! How, when Death
Hath stopped with ruthless hand some precious breath,
The memory of the voice he hath destroyed
Lives in our souls, as in an aching void!
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