And a proverb haunts my mind

But the waiting time, my brothers, Is the hardest time of all.

I send thee pansies while the year is young, Yellow as sunshine, purple as the night; Flowers of remembrance, ever fondly sung By all the chiefest of the Sons of Light.

The pure, the beautiful, the bright, That stirred our hearts in youth, The impulse to a wordless prayer, The dreams of love and truth, The longings after something lost, The spirit’s yearning cry,

I look'd far back into the past, and lo! in bright array, I saw, as in a dream, the forms of ages pass'd away. It was a stately convent, with its old and lofty walls, And gardens with their broad green walks, where soft the footstep falls.

On the morning of January 11th, 1860, I passed, for the eighth time, through the Golden Gate... As the shores of California faded in the distance, and the summits of the Coast Range sank under the blue horizon, I bade farewell — yes, I do …

Tho’ sickness yet a while forbears, Yet time destroys what sickness spares; Now Helen lives alone in fame And Cleopatra's but a name; Time must indent that heav'nly brow, And thou must be what they are now.