The Girls We Might Have Wed.

Come, brothers, let us sing a dirge, -     A dirge for myriad chances dead;     In grief your mournful accents merge:     Sing, sing the girls we might have wed!     Sweet lips were those we never pressed     In love that never lost the dew     In sunlight of a love confessed, -     Kind were the girls we never knew!     Sing low, sing low, while in the glow     Of fancy's hour those forms we trace,     Hovering around the years that go;     Those years our lives can ne'er replace!     Sweet lips are those that never turn     A cruel word; dear eyes that lead     The heart on in a blithe concern;     White hand of her we did not wed;     Fair hair or dark, that falls along     A form that never shrinks with time;     Bright image of a realm of song,     Standing beside our years of prime; -     When you shall go, then may we know     The heart is dead, the man is old.     Life can no other charm bestow     When girls we might have loved turn cold!