Ah, tell me not that memory
    Sheds gladness o'er the past;
What is recalled by faded flowers,
    Save that they did not last?
Were it not better to forget,
Than but remember and regret?

Look back upon your hours of youth—
    What were your early years,
But scenes of childish cares and griefs?
    And say not childish tears
Were nothing; at that time they were
More than the young heart well could bear.

Go on to riper years, and look
    Upon your sunny spring;
And from the wrecks of former years,
    What will your memory bring?—
Affections wasted, pleasures fled,
And hopes now numbered with the dead!