How can it matter what they were to me,
The old, old lovers of the days long dead,
Nor what they whispered fondly, what I said,
Since it is all so far away from me!
O! blot not thus hours bought so bitterly
By useless brooding o’er things vanished,—dead;
The past, Dear, is a tide that’s hastenèd
Back, back again unto the shoreless sea.
O foolish, foolish fond one that you are!
How much you owe them of the long ago