C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

To the Reader

Translation of E. and R. E. Prothero

THESE flowers I gathered by the highway side,

Where good and evil fate has cast my days:

I dare not give them to you loosely tied;

I’ll twine them in a wreath—to win more praise.

Still fresh, the rose is weeping tear on tear;

The pansy lifts her eye of purple hue;

Then the calm lilies, dreamers of the mere,

And budding corn;—and there my life lies too.

And thine too, reader,—is’t not even so?

One fate is always ours in joy or woe,—

To weep love’s tears, and think, but never know,

How we have lost in dreaming spring’s best day.

Then comes the hour when we would rise from play,

And plant some seed before we pass away.