Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1838/Disenchantment
107
DISENCHANTMENT.
Do not ask me why I loved him,
Love’s cause is to love unknown;
Faithless as the past has proved him,
Once his heart appeared mine own.
Do not say he did not merit
All my fondness, all my truth;
Those in whom love dwells inherit
Every dream that haunted youth.
He might not be all I dreamed him,
Noble, generous, gifted, true,
Not the less I fondly deemed him,
All those flattering visions drew.
All the hues of old romances
By his actual self grew dim;
Bitterly I mock the fancies
That once found their life in him.
From the hour by him enchanted,
From the moment when we met,
Henceforth with one image haunted,
Life may never more forget.
All my nature changed—his being
Seemed the only source of mine.
Fond heart, hadst thou no foreseeing
Thy sad future to divine?
Once, upon myself relying,
All I asked were words and thought;
Many hearts to mine replying,
Owned the music that I brought.
Eager, spiritual, and lonely,
Visions filled the fairy hour,
Deep with love—though love was only
Not a presence, but a power.
But from that first hour I met thee,
All caught actual life from you.
Alas! how can I forget thee,
Thou who mad’st the fancied true?
Once my wide world was ideal,
Fair it was—all! very fair.
Wherefore hast thou made it real?
Wherefore is thy image there?
Ah! no more to me is given
Fancy’s far and fairy birth;
Chords upon my lute are riven,
Never more to sound on earth.
Once, sweet music could it borrow
From a look, a word, a tone;
I could paint another’s sorrow—
Now I think but of mine own.
Life’s dark waves have lost the glitter
Which at morning-tide they wore,
And the well within is bitter;
Naught its sweetness may restore:
For I know how vainly given
Life’s most precious things may be,
Love that might have looked on heaven,
Even as it looked on thee.
Ah, farewell!—with that word dying,
Hope and love must perish too.
For thy sake themselves denying,
What is truth with thee untrue
Farewell!—’tis a dreary sentence,
Like the death-doom of the grave,
May it wake in thee repentance,
Stinging when too late to save!