Be thou happy—a thousand times happy!
If the gentle, the good, and the kind,
Could make of themselves an existence,
How blessed a fate thou wouldst find!
For never their elements blended
In a nature more lovely than thine;
And thy beauty is but a reflection
Of what thine own heart is the shrine.
Farewell! I shall make thee no longer
My sweet summer queen of romance;
No more will my princes pay homage,
My knights for thy smile break the lance.
Confess they were exquisite lovers,
The fictions that knelt at thy throne;
But the graceful, the gallant, the noble,
What fancy could equal thine own?
Farewell! and henceforth I enshrine thee
Mid the earlier dreams that have past
O'er my lute, like the fairies by moonlight,
To leave it more lonely at last.
Alas! it is sad to remember
The once gentle music now mute;
For many a chord hath time stolen
Alike from my heart and my lute.
Ah, most of their memories are shadows,
Flung down from the brightness of yore;
There are feelings for ever departed,
And hopes that are treasures no more.
But thou livest only in music—
A broken but beautiful spell;
'Tis as well, for my song has grown colder—
Sweet lady, for ever farewell!
