How strange to parley with the dead!
Keep ye your green, wan leaves? How many
From Friendship's tree untimely shed!
And here is one as sad as any;
A ghastly bill! "I disapprove,"
And yet She help'd me to defray it—
What tokens of a Mother's love!
O, bitter thought! I can't repay it.
And here's the offer that I wrote
In '33 to Lucy Diver;
And here John Wylie's begging note,—
He never paid me back a stiver.
And here my feud with Major Spike,
Our bet about the French Invasion;
I must confess I acted like
A donkey upon that occasion.
Here's news from Paternoster Row!
How mad I was when first I learnt it:
They would not take my Book, and now
I'd give a trifle to have burnt it.
And here a pile of notes, at last,
With "love," and "dove," and "sever," "never,"—
Though hope, though passion may be past,
Their perfume is as sweet as ever.
A human heart should beat for two,
Despite the scoffs of single scorners;
And all the hearths I ever knew
Had got a pair of chimney corners.
See here a double violet—
Two locks of hair—a deal of scandal;
I'll burn what only brings regret—
Go, Betty, fetch a lighted candle.