Oh, no! we never mention him, his name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak that once familiar word:
From sport to sport they hurry me, to banish my regret;
And when they win a smile from me, they think that 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?
For oh! there are so many things recall the past to me—
The breeze upon the sunny hills, the billows of the sea;
The rosy tint that decks the sky before the sun is set;—
Ay, every leaf I look upon forbids me to forget.
They tell me he is happy now, the gayest of the gay;
They hint that he forgets me too,—but I heed not what they say:
Perhaps like me he struggles with each feeling of regret;
But if he loves as I have loved, he never can forget.
—Thomas Haynes Bayley, 1797-1839.
1188
Is it possible a man can be so changed by love that one would not know him for the same person?
1189
Girls we love for what they are; young men for what they promise to be.
—Goethe.