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I WHEN you shall see me in the toils of Time, | |
| My lauded beauties carried off from me, | |
| My eyes no longer stars as in their prime, | |
| My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free; | |
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| When in your being heart concedes to mind, | 5 |
| And judgement, though you scarce its process know, | |
| Recalls the excellences I once enshrined, | |
| And you are irk’d that they have wither’d so; | |
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| Remembering mine the loss is, not the blame, | |
| That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill, | 10 |
| Knowing me in my soul the very same— | |
| One who would die to spare you touch of ill!— | |
| Will you not grant to old affection’s claim | |
| The hand of friendship down Life’s sunless hill? | |
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II PERHAPS, long hence, when I have pass’d away, | 15 |
| Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine, | |
| Will carry you back to what I used to say, | |
| And bring some memory of your love’s decline. | |
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| Then you may pause awhile and think, ‘Poor jade!’ | |
| And yield a sigh to me—as ample due, | 20 |
| Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid | |
| To one who could resign her all to you— | |
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| And thus reflecting, you will never see | |
| That your thin thought, in two small words convey’d, | |
| Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me, | 25 |
| But the Whole Life wherein my part was play’d; | |
| And you amid its fitful masquerade | |
| A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be. | |
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