Your past is past and never to return, The long bright yesterday of life's first years, Its days are dead —— cold ashes in an urn². Some held for you a chalice³ for your tears, And other days strewed⁴ flowers upon your way. They all are gone beyond your reach, And thus they are beyond my speech. I know them not, so that your first gone times To me unknown, lie far beyond my rhymes. But I can bless your soul and aims to-day, And I can ask your future to be sweet, And I can pray that you may never meet With any cross, you are too weak to bear. Virginia, Virgin¹ name, and may you wear Its virtues⁵ and its beauties, fore'er and fore'er. I breathe this blessing, and I pray this prayer