TO A LADY.
189
TO A LADY.[1]
Oh! had my Fate been join'd with thine,[2]
As once this pledge appear'd a token,
These follies had not, then, been mine,
For, then, my peace had not been broken.
2.
To thee, these early faults I owe,
To thee, the wise and old reproving:
They know my sins, but do not know
'Twas thine to break the bonds of loving.
3.
For once my soul, like thine, was pure,
And all its rising fires could smother;
But, now, thy vows no more endure,
Bestow'd by thee upon another.
- ↑ To ——.— [Hours of Idleness. Poems O, and T.]
- ↑ [These verses were addressed to Mrs. Chaworth Musters. Byron wrote in 1822, "Our meetings were stolen ones.... A gate leading from Mr. Chaworth's grounds to those of my mother was the place of our interviews. The ardour was all on my side. I was serious; she was volatile: she liked me as a younger brother, and treated and laughed at me as a boy; she, however, gave me her picture, and that was something to make verses upon. Had I married her, perhaps, the whole tenour of my life would have been different."—Medwin's Conversations, 1824, p. 81.]
