Explore "The House of Regret" by Francis Sherman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It is not that I now were happier / If with the dawn my tireless feet were led / Along her path, till I saw her fair head / Thrown back to make the sunshine goldener: / For it is well, sometimes, the things that were / Are over, ere their perfectness hath fled; / Lest the old love of them should fade instead, / And lie like ruins round the throne of her.
Now with the wisdom of increasing years / I know each ancient joy a cup for tears; / Yet had I drunk, while they were draughts to praise, / Deeper, I were not now as men that grow / Old, and sit gazing out across the snow / To dream sad dreams of wasted summer days.