Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 3.djvu/173

To him this pledge I charge thee send,^{[lower-roman 1]}
Memorial of a youthful vow;
I would remind him of my end:
Though souls absorbed like mine allow
Brief thought to distant Friendship's claim,
Yet dear to him my blighted name.
'Tis strange—he prophesied my doom,
And I have smiled—I then could smile—
When Prudence would his voice assume, 1230
And warn—I recked not what—the while:
But now Remembrance whispers o'er^{[lower-roman 2]}

Those accents scarcely marked before.
Say—that his bodings came to pass,
And he will start to hear their truth,
And wish his words had not been sooth:
Tell him—unheeding as I was,
Through many a busy bitter scene
Of all our golden youth had been,
In pain, my faltering tongue had tried 1240
To bless his memory—ere I died;

Variants

1. I have no heart to love him now
   And 'tis but to declare my end.—[MS.]

2. But now Remembrance murmurs o'er
   Of all our early youth had been—
   In pain, I now had turned aside
   To bless his memory ere I died,
   But Heaven would mark the vain essay,
   If Guilt should for the guiltless pray—
   I do not ask him not to blame—
   Too gentle he to wound my name—
   I do not ask him not to mourn,
   For such request might sound like scorn—
   And what like Friendship's manly tear
   So well can grace a brother's bier?
   But bear this ring he gave of old,
   And tell him—what thou didst behold—
   The withered frame—the ruined mind,
   The wreck that Passion leaves behind—
   The shrivelled and discoloured leaf
   Seared by the Autumn blast of Grief.—[MS., First Copy.]