Remembered-not with Passion's sigh, But oh! remembered still : And even from your side, Love, One look is o'er the tide, Love, Alas! your lips are rosier, Your eyes of softer blue, And I have never felt for her As I have felt for you; Our love was like the snow-flakes, Which melt before you pass Or the bubble on the wine, which breaks Before you lip the glass. You saw these eye-lids wet, Love, Which she has never seen;' But bid me not forget, Love, My poor Josephine! TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE. I HEARD a sick man's dying sigh, The Old Year went with mourning by- Let Sorrow shed her lonely tear, Let Revelry hold her ladle; Bring boughs of cypress for the bier, Fling roses on the cradle; Mutes to wait on the funeral state; A requiem for Twenty-Eight, And a health to Twenty-Nine! Alas for human happiness! Alas for human sorrow! Our yesterday is nothingness, What else will be our morrow? Still Beauty must be stealing hearts, And wits by making verses; While sages prate and courts debate, The same stars set and shine; And the world as it rolled through Twenty-Eight, Must roll through Twenty-Nine. Some King will come, in Heaven's good time, To the tomb his father came to; Some Thief will wade through blood and crime To a crown he has no claim to; Some suffering land will rend in twain The manacles that bound her; And gather the links of the broken chain The grand and great will love and hate, And combat and combine; And much where we were in Twenty-Eight, O'Connell will toil to raise the Rent, And Shiel will abuse the Parliament, And thought of bayonets and swords Will make ex-Chancellors merry; TWENTY-EIGHT AND TWENTY-NINE. 241 And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords, And writers of weight will speculate On the Cabinet's design; And just what it did in Twenty-Eight It will do in Twenty-Nine. And the Goddess of Love will keep her smiles, And the God of Cups his orgies ; And there'll be riots in St. Giles, And weddings in St. George's; And Lords will swear like lacqueys; Alas! they married in Twenty-Eight, My uncle will swathe his gouty limbs, My aunt, Miss Dobbs, will play longer hymns, My cousin in Parliament will prove My brother, at Eton, will fall in love My patron will sate his pride from plate, His nose was red in Twenty-Eight, And O! I shall find how, day by day, But still I shall be what I have been, Sworn foe to Lady Reason, And seldom troubled with the spleen, And fond of talking treason; I shall buckle my skait, and leap my gate, And the woman I worshipped in Twenty-Eight I shall worship in Twenty-Nine. |