232 THE LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
Such deep devotedness as feels 
The Indian when he humbly kneels 
Before his idol’s car, to meet 
A death of rapture at his feet. 
Such love was mine — tho’ fraught with ill. 
The cure, the cure is bitterer still. 
Oh, grief beyond all other griefs! 
To feel the slow decay 
Of love and hope within the heart. 
Ere youth be passed away — 
To know that life must henceforth be 
A voyage o’er a tideless sea. 
No ebb nor flow of hopes and fears 
To vary the dull waste of years: 
Oh, love may be life’s chiefest ill. 
Yet ah! the cure is bitterer still. 
