Page:Poems Hornblower.djvu/189

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177

THE ADIEU.
I leave thee, dear one, leave thee, and long the time must be,
And spring must shine, and summer bloom, ere I return to thee;
And when the well-known door again is opened to my call,
I perhaps may hear thy little feet resounding in the hall.

And all thy infant helplessness will then have past away,
Thou wilt not have remembered me, for many a distant clay;
And tones of mine, though fondest ones, will fall upon thine ear,
Ev'n as a stranger's voice might come, that never had been dear.