Thomas Haynes Bayly - Page 2

"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. Jeames imitated him:

"R. Hangeline, R. Lady mine, Dost thou remember Jeames!"

We should do the trick quite differently now, more like this:

"Love spake to me and said: 'Oh, lips, be mute; Let that one name be dead, That memory flown and fled, Untouched that lute! Go forth,' said Love, 'with willow in thy hand, And in thy hair Dead blossoms wear, Blown from the sunless land.

"'Go forth,' said Love; 'thou never more shalt see Her shadow glimmer by the trysting tree; But SHE is glad, With roses crowned and clad, Who hath forgotten thee!' But I made answer: 'Love! Tell me no more thereof, For she has drunk of that same cup as I. Yea, though her eyes be dry, She garners there for me Tears salter than the sea, Even till the day she die.' So gave I Love the lie."

I declare I nearly weep over these lines; for, though they are only Bayly's sentiment hastily recast in a modern manner, there is something so very affecting, mouldy, and unwholesome about them, that they sound as if they had been "written up to" a sketch by a disciple of Mr. Rossetti's.

In a mood much more manly and moral, Mr. Bayly wrote another poem to the young lady:

"May thy lot in life be happy, undisturbed by thoughts of me, The God who shelters innocence thy guard and guide will be. Thy heart will lose the chilling sense of hopeless love at last, And the sunshine of the future chase the shadows of the past."

It is as easy as prose to sing in this manner. For example:

"In fact, we need not be concerned; 'at last' comes very soon, and our Emilia quite forgets the memory of the moon, the moon that shone on her and us, the woods that heard our vows, the moaning of the waters, and the murmur of the boughs. She is happy with another, and by her we're quite forgot; she never lets a thought of us bring shadow on her lot; and if we meet at dinner she's too clever to repine, and mentions us to Mr. Smith as 'An old flame of