Sonnet III
There was a youth around whose early wayWhite angels hung in converse and sweet choir,Teaching in summer clouds his thought to stray,—In cloud and far horizon to desire.His life was nursed in beauty, like the streamBorn of clear showers and the mountain dew,Close under snow-clad summits where they gleamForever pure against heaven’s orient blue.Within the city’s shades he walked at last.Faint and more faint in sad recessionalDown the dim corridors of Time outworn,A chorus ebbed from that forsaken past,A hymn of glories fled beyond recallWith the lost heights and splendor of life’s morn.