O my lost love!  Bright o’er the waste of years—­
That bliss and beauty shines upon my soul;
As far beyond yon desert hangs the sun,
Gilding with tender beam the barren stretch
Of sands that intervene.  In this still light
The old sweet memories glimmer back to me. 
Fair summers of my youth,—­the idle days
I wandered in the bosky coverts hid
In the dim woods that girt my ancient home;
The blue young eyes I met and worshipped there;
The love that growing turned those gloomy wilds
To faery dells, and filled the vernal air
With light that bathed the hills of Paradise;
The warm, long days of rapturous summer-time,
When through the forests thick and lush we strayed,
And love made our own sunshine in the shades. 
And all things fair and graceful in the woods
I loved with liberal heart; the violets
Were dear for her dear eyes, the quiring birds
That caught the musical tremble of her voice. 
O happy twilights in the leafy glooms! 
When in the glowing dusk the winsome arts
And maiden graces that all day had kept
Us twain and separate melted away
In blushing silence, and my love was mine
Utterly, utterly, with clinging arms
And quick, caressing fingers, warm red lips,
Where vows, half uttered, drowned in kisses, died;
Mine, with the starlight in her passionate eyes;
The wild wind of the woodland breathing low
To wake the elfin music of the leaves,
And free the prisoned odors of the flowers,
In honor of young Love come to his throne! 
While we under the stars, with twining arms
And mutual lips insatiate, gave our souls—­
Madly forgetting earth and heaven—­to love!

In desert march or battles flame,
  In fortress and in field,
Our war-cry is thy holy name,
  Thy love our joy and shield! 
And if we falter, let thy power
  Thy stern avenger be,
And God forget us in the hour
  We cease to think of thee!

Curse me not, God of Justice and of Love! 
Pitiful God, let my long woe atone!

I cannot deem but God has pitied me;
Else why with painful care have I been saved,
Whenever tossed and drenched in the fierce tide
Of Saladin’s victories by the walls profaned
Of Jaffa, on the sands of far Daroum,
Or in the battle thundering on the downs
Of Ramlah, or the bloody day that shed
Red horrors on high Gaza’s parapets? 
For never a storm of fatal fight has raged
In Islam’s track of rout and ruin swept
From Egypt to Gebail, but when the ebb
Of battle came I and my host have lain,
Scarred, scorched, safe somewhere on its fiery shore. 
At Marcab’s lingering siege, where day by day
We told the Moslem legions toiling slow,
Planting their engines, delving in their mines
To quench in our destruction this last light
Of Christendom, our fortress in the crags,
God’s beacon swung defiant from the stars;