Landon in The Literary Gazette 1824/Farewell!
Literary Gazette, 1st May, 1824, Page 284
ORIGINAL POETRY.
Farewell! for I have schooled my heart
At last to say farewell to thee!
Now I can bear to look on death,—
Its bitterness is past for me.
There was a time I should have wept
To look upon my altered brow—
The lip, whence red and smile are fled—
But I am glad to see them now!
The faded brow, the pallid lip,
Proclaim what soon my fate will be;
And welcome is their tale of death,
For I have said farewell to thee!
When first we met, I saw thee all
A girl's imagining could feign;
I did not dream of loving thee,
Still less of being loved again.
I felt it not, till round my heart
Link after link the chain was wove;
Then burst at once upon my brain
The maddening thought—I love! I love!
We then were parting, others wept,
But I let not one teardrop fall;
And when each kind Farewell was said,
Mine was the coldest of them all.
But mine the ear that strained to hear
Thy latest step; and mine the eye
That watched thy distant shape, when none
But me its shadow could descry.
And when the circle in its mirth
Had quite forgot Farewell and Thee,
I went to my own room, and wept
The tears I would not let thee see.
And time pass'd on; but not with time
Did thoughts of thee and thine depart;
The lesson of forgetfulness
Was what I could not teach my heart.
We met again, and woman's pride
Nerved me to what I had to bear;
I would not, tho' my heart had broke,
Have let thee find thine image there.
I felt thine eyes gazing on mine;
I felt my hand within thine hold;
I heard my name breathed by thy voice,
And I was calm, and I was cold.
And then I heard you had a bride—
I know not how, I know not when—
For, still my brain swims round to think
Of all, all that I suffered then!
I knew the day, the very hour,
That you were wed, and heard your vow;
I heard the wedding bells—oh, God!
Mine ear rings with them even now!
I may not say that you were false,
I never had one vow from thee;
But I have often seen thine eye
Look as it loved to look on me.
And when you spoke to me, your voice
Would always take a softer tone;
And surely that last night your cheek
Was almost pallid as my own.
But this is worse than vain Farewell!
Of Heaven now I only crave
For thee all of life's happiness,
And for myself an early grave! L. E. L.