Landon in The Literary Gazette 1825/Stanzas 4
Literary Gazette, 1st October, 1825, Page 636
ORIGINAL POETRY.
STANZAS.
Oh, tell me not I shall forget
The lesson he has taught me,
Albeit I may not feel so much
The wo that lesson wrought me.
I do believe my heart will beat
Less wildly than 'tis beating now,
That time will calm my bursting pulse,
And bring its calmness to my brow.
I do believe that I shall bear
To hear them name to me thy name,
Without my heart beating to pain,
Without my cheek burning to flame.
I do believe that I shall learn
To see thee coldly gaze on me,
Aye, carelessly as thou, for pride
Will nerve the look I turn on thee.
But never may my heart forget
How dear a dream love's dream has been;
Time's lapse may fling a softened shade,
But never quite efface the scene.
And to my latest hour my love,
Shrowded in my heart's last recess,
Like a funereal lamp will dwell
In melancholy tenderness;
But deep and lonely, not so much
Love as love's memory, like the air
That lingers in just felt perfume,
To say the rose has blossomed there—
A sad remembrance of sweet thoughts,
Shedding their softness over pain.
But may I hope to feel like this,
To dare to think of thee again?
How I have loved thee, I have taught
My lute, my spirit's passionate words;
But to have breathed one half my love,
The passion would have burst its chords.
I would have rather been a slave
In fettered bondage by thy side,
Than shared in all the world could give,
Had it not given thee beside.
I treasured up thy lightest word,
Dwelt upon all that breathed of thee—
Caught thy least sigh—caught thy least look,
Why did I think it turn'd on me?
My lute had often breathed of love,
But never thought of love as mine;
Love's pulse lay sleeping in my heart—
To wake it into life was thine!
And then I almost feared my fame,
Lest thou mightst think my heart was there:—
Ah, to be nothing, save to thee,
Was all that heart's, fond woman's, prayer.
And then I dreamed I was beloved,
And there was heaven in the dream;
That such a dream could pass away!
That such a heaven could only seem!
I saw thee change, yet would not see;
Knew all, what yet I would not know;
My foolish heart seemed as it feared,
To own thee false, would make thee so.
I pined to see thy face again;
I thought our meeting eyes would be
A sunbeam, melting the snow-spell
That now seemed set 'twixt thee and me.
But the first word, but the first look,
I felt my hopes were all in vain,
And then I would have given worlds
I had not seen thy face again.
I shrank from thy cold careless tone,
I withered in thine altered eye
And felt as if in the wide world
Was only left for me to die.
I felt my cheek burn at thy gaze,
Altho' I scorned it for its glow;
I suffered in one little hour
All a whole life could feel of wo.
It burns tho' now but at the thought
I could be to such weakness won,
That my high spirit could be taught
To bend to thee as it has done.
No more of this—I will not think
Of all I've suffered for thy sake;
I dare not dwell upon the past,
Or even now my heart will break.
Thy thought shall only be to me
The picture of a peril o'er—
Enough to know that I have loved,
Enough to know I love no more!L. E. L.