O Love, What Hours Were Thine And Mine

O, love, what hours were thine and mine,

In the land of palm and southern pine;

In lands of palm, and orange blossom,

Of olive, aloe, maize and vine.

The Lovers
(1911)
N.C. Wyeth

Nor knew we well what pleased us most,

Nor the clipt palm of which they boast;

But distant colour, happy hamlet,

A moulder'd citadel on the coast,

Or tower, or high hill-convent, seen

A light amid its olive green;

Or olive-hoary cape in ocean;

Or rosy blossom in hot ravine.

What more? we took our last adieu,

And up the snowy Splugen drew,

But ere we reach'd the highest summit

I pluck'd a daisy, I gave it you.

It told of England then to me,

And now it tells of Italy.

O love, we two shall go no longer

To the lands of summer across the sea;

So dear a life your arms enfold

Whose crying is a cry for gold:

Yet here to-night in this dark city,

When ill and weary, alone and cold,

I found tho' crush'd to hard and dry,

This nursling of another sky

Still in the little book you lent me,

And where you tenderly laid it by:

And I forgot the clouded Forth,

The gloom that saddens Heaven and Earth

The bitter east, the misty summer

And gray metropolis of the North.

Perchance, to lull the throbs of pain,

Perchance, to charm a vacant brain,

Perchance, to dream you still beside me,

My fancy fled to the South again.

"O Love, What Hours Were Thine And Mine"

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

(1809-1892)

British poet