"
Will this not do to sing just as well as the original? and is it not
true that "almost any man you please could reel it off for days
together"? Anything will do that speaks of forgetting people, and
of being forsaken, and about the sunset, and the ivy, and the rose.
"Tell me no more that the tide of thine anguish
Is red as the heart's blood and salt as the sea;
That the stars in their courses command thee to languish,
That the hand of enjoyment is loosened from thee!
"Tell me no more that, forgotten, forsaken,
Thou roamest the wild wood, thou sigh'st on the shore.
Nay, rent is the pledge that of old we had taken,
And the words that have bound me, they bind thee no more!
"Ere the sun had gone down on thy sorrow, the maidens
Were wreathing the orange's bud in thy hair,
And the trumpets were tuning the musical cadence
That gave thee, a bride, to the baronet's heir.
"Farewell, may no thought pierce thy breast of thy treason;
Farewell, and be happy in Hubert's embrace.
Be the belle of the ball, be the bride of the season,
With diamonds bedizened and languid in lace."
This is mine, and I say, with modest pride, that it is quite as good
as -
"Go, may'st thou be happy,
Though sadly we part,
In life's early summer
Grief breaks not the heart.
"The ills that assail us
As speedily pass
As shades o'er a mirror,
Which stain not the glass."
Anybody could do it, we say, in what Edgar Poe calls "the mad pride
of intellectuality," and it certainly looks as if it could be done
by anybody.
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