Decidedly we are less touched by Tom Moore, who desired that, at his death, his heart should be presented to his mistress:
Tell her it liv’d upon smiles and wine
Of the brightest hue while it lingered here.
Which fact must have been a great comfort to the recipient of this final love token.
But Byron was the man for love tokens. To “Mary” on receiving her picture, to “a lady” who sent him a lock of her hair braided with his own, and to scores of others, he wrote still living lines. Several such verses seem now more ludicrous than lovely. To her who presented him with the velvet band that had bound her tresses, he vowed:
Oh! I will wear it next my heart;
’Twill bind my soul in bonds to thee;
From me again ’twill ne’er depart,
But mingle in the grave with me.
This was written in 1806. He was then eighteen. Think of the love tokens “binding his soul,” and otherwise encumbering him, during the eighteen years that followed, and of all those, if he kept his promises, that now “mingle in the grave” with him! Fortunately, however, the poet had the happy facility of disencumbering himself. His love tokens to one unfortunate were a chain and lute. The gifts were charmed, “her truth in absence to divine.” The chain shivered in the grasp of any other that took it from her neck; the chords of the lute were mute when another attempted to sing to her of his love. And how in his element was Byron when he could write to her:
’Tis past—to them and thee adieu—
False heart, frail chain and silent lute.
But, despite Moore’s insincerity and Byron’s vagaries, the man of to-day more frequently, and longer than woman, cherishes his tokens of love.
How often do men bring breach of promise suits? Women—none possibly that you or I personally know—will calmly enter the courtroom and brutally exhibit their love letters and love tokens—the most sacred things on earth, are they not?—to indifferent jurors, gleeful reporters and the gloating public.
Compare such a courtroom scene with the floral games of the Toulouse of long ago, and the legendary origin of the golden violet. Imprisoned by her father because of her love, the girl threw from between the bars a bouquet to her lover—a bouquet of a violet, an eglantine and a marigold. In a later siege, the lover saved the father’s life, but lost his own. Dying, he took the flowers from his bosom and implored that they be returned to his sweetheart. The maiden’s death followed quickly. All she had on earth she left, in memory of her love token, to the celebration of the floral games, and the golden violet became the troubadours’ most cherished prize.