A ROSE once pressed against thy lips,
Then gayly flung to me,
Is all the gift I treasure up
In memory of thee;
It bringeth back that golden time,
Too beautiful to last,
The glad and love-lit past, Therese,
The glad and love-lit past!

Then comes the memory of the change
Which fell upon thy heart,
As falls the frost upon the rose
When summer suns depart;
And now returns that weary time
With doubts and glooms o'ercast,
The sad and mournful past, Therese,
The sad and mournful past!

Young flowers, fair, quickly fading flowers,
Love's meetest emblems they,
For naught in life so fitly marks
Its swift and sure decay;
O type of that frail, passing faith
So fondly set apart
To wither in its early dew,
And die upon my heart!