Life's brightest memories around you cling.
  Child, girl, and woman, I have loved you long.
My friend, my poet, if I too may sing,
  To you is dedicate my wreath of song.

Yet it should be of fairer flowers than grow
  Within my garden wall. This wreath I twine
In Beauty's fields, where deathless blossoms glow,
  The hand that gathers them alone is mine.