CANTO I.]
CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE.
29
And when they on their father call,
What answer shall she make?'—
"Enough, enough, my yeoman good,[1]
Thy grief let none gainsay;
But I, who am of lighter mood,
Will laugh to flee away.
8.
"For who would trust the seeming sighs[2]
Of wife or paramour?
Fresh feeres will dry the bright blue eyes
We late saw streaming o'er.
For pleasures past I do not grieve,
Nor perils gathering near;
My greatest grief is that I leave
No thing that claims a tear.[3]
- ↑
Enough, enough, my yeoman good,
All this is well to say;
But if I in thy sandals stood
I'd laugh to get away.—[MS. erased, D.] - ↑
For who would trust a paramour
Or e'en a wedded feere—
Though her blue eyes were streaming o'er.
And torn her yellow hair?—[MS.] - ↑ ["I leave England without regret—I shall return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no apple but what was sour as a crab" (letter to F. Hodgson, Falmouth, June 25, 1809, Letters, 1898, i. 230). If this Confessio Amantis, with which compare the "Stanzas to a Lady, on leaving England," is to be accepted as bonâ fide, he leaves England heart-whole, but for the bitter memory of Mary Chaworth.]
