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.
