I've been to the old farm-house, good-wife,
Where you and I were wed;
Where the love was born to our two hearts
That now lies cold and dead.
Where a long-kept secret to you I told,
In the yellow beams of the moon,
And we forged our vows out of love's own gold,
To be broken so soon, so soon!
I passed through all the old rooms, good-wife;
I wandered on and on;
I followed the steps of a flitting ghost,
The ghost of a love that is gone.
And he led me out to the arbor, wife,
Where with myrtles I twined your hair;
And he seated me down on the old stone step,
And left me musing there.
The sun went down as it used to do,
And sunk in the sea of night;
The two bright stars that we called ours
Came slowly unto my sight;
But the one that was mine went under a cloud—
Went under a cloud, alone;
And a tear that I wouldn't have shed for the world,
Fell down on the old gray stone.
But there be words can ne'er be unsaid,
And deeds can ne'er be undone,
Except perhaps in another world,
Where life's once more begun.
And maybe some time in the time to come,
When a few more years are sped,
We'll love again as we used to love,
In the house where we were wed.