The holiest of all holidays are
Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;
The secret anniversaries of the heart,
When the full river of feeling overflows;—The happy days unclouded to their close;
The sudden joys that out of darkness
As flames from ashes; swift desires that
Like swallows singing down each wind that blows!
White as the gleam of a receding sail,
White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,
White as the whitest lily on a stream,
These tender memories are;—a fairy
Of some enchanted land we know not where,
But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
