But "they were both too wise to think of living upon love,
and, after mutual tears and sighs, they parted never to meet again.
The lady, though grieved, was not heartbroken, and soon became the
wife of another." They usually do. Mr. Bayly's regret was more
profound, and expressed itself in the touching ditty:
"Oh, no, we never mention her,
Her name is never heard,
My lips are now forbid to speak
That once familiar word;
From sport to sport they hurry me
To banish my regret,
And when they only worry me -
[I beg Mr. Bayly's pardon]
"And when they win a smile from me,
They fancy I forget.
"They bid me seek in change of scene
The charms that others see,
But were I in a foreign land
They'd find no change in me.
'Tis true that I behold no more
The valley where we met;
I do not see the hawthorn tree,
But how can I forget?"
* * *
"They tell me she is happy now,
[And so she was, in fact.]
The gayest of the gay;
They hint that she's forgotten me;
But heed not what they say.
Like me, perhaps, she struggles with
Each feeling of regret:
'Tis true she's married Mr. Smith,
But, ah, does she forget!"
The temptation to parody is really too strong; the last lines,
actually and in an authentic text, are:
"But if she loves as I have loved,
She never can forget."
Bayly had now struck the note, the sweet, sentimental note, of the
early, innocent, Victorian age.
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