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| BRAVE lads in olden musical centuries | |
| Sang, night by night, adorable choruses, | |
| Sat late by alehouse doors in April | |
| Chaunting in joy as the moon was rising. | |
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| Moon-seen and merry, under the trellises, | 5 |
| Flush-faced they play’d with old polysyllables | |
| Spring scents inspired, old wine diluted: | |
| Love and Apollo were there to chorus. | |
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| Now these, the songs, remain to eternity, | |
| Those, only those, the bountiful choristers | 10 |
| Gone—those are gone, those unremember’d | |
| Sleep and are silent in earth for ever. | |
| |
| So man himself appears and evanishes, | |
| So smiles and goes; as wanderers halting at | |
| Some green-embower’d house, play their music, | 15 |
| Play and are gone on the windy highway. | |
| |
| Yet dwells the strain enshrined in the memory | |
| Long after they departed eternally, | |
| Forth-faring tow’rd far mountain summits, | |
| Cities of men or the sounding Ocean. | 20 |
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| Youth sang the song in years immemorial: | |
| Brave chanticleer, he sang and was beautiful; | |
| Bird-haunted green tree-tops in springtime | |
| Heard, and were pleased by the voice of singing. | |
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| Youth goes and leaves behind him a prodigy— | 25 |
| Songs sent by thee afar from Venetian | |
| Sea-grey lagunes, sea-paven highways, | |
| Dear to me here in my Alpine exile. | |
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