Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1824.pdf/46

45 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.