Yet Love Can Last

Yet Love can last, yes, Love can last, The Future be as was the Past, And faith and fondness never know The chill of dwindling afterglow, If to familiar hearth there cling The virgin freshness of the spring, And April’s music still be heard In wooing voice and winning word. If when autumnal shadows streak The furrowed brow, the wrinkled cheek, Devotion, deepening to the close, Like fruit that ripens, tenderer grows; If, though the leaves of youth and hope Lie thick on life’s declining slope, The fond heart, faithful to the last, Lingers in love-drifts of the past; If, with the gravely shortening days, Faith trims the lamp, Faith feeds the blaze, And Reverence, robed in wintry white, Sheds fragrance like a summer night,— Then Love can last!