[I beg Mr. Bayly’s pardon]
“And when they win a smile from me,
They fancy I forget.“They bid me seek in change of scene
The charms that others see,
But were I in a foreign land
They’d find no change in me.
’Tis true that I behold no more
The valley where we met;
I do not see the hawthorn tree,
But how can I forget?”* * * * *
“They tell me she is happy now,
[And so she was, in fact.]
The gayest of the gay;
They hint that she’s forgotten me;
But heed not what they say.
Like me, perhaps, she struggles with
Each feeling of regret:
’Tis true she’s married Mr. Smith,
But, ah, does she forget!”
The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines, actually and in an authentic text, are:
“But if she loves as I have loved,
She never can forget.”
Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the early, innocent, Victorian age. Jeames imitated him:
“R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine,
Dost thou remember Jeames!”
We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this:
“Love spake to me and said:
‘Oh, lips, be mute;
Let that one name be dead,
That memory flown and fled,
Untouched that lute!
Go forth,’ said Love, ‘with willow in thy hand,
And in thy hair
Dead blossoms wear,
Blown from the sunless land.“‘Go forth,’ said Love; ‘thou never more shalt see
Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree;
But she is glad,
With roses crowned and clad,
Who hath forgotten thee!’
But I made answer: ‘Love!
Tell me no more thereof,
For she has drunk of that same cup as I.
Yea, though her eyes be dry,
She garners there for me
Tears salter than the sea,
Even till the day she die.’
So gave I Love the lie.”