WEYMOUTH.
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GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER I DWELT in the shade of a city,She far by the sea,With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;But never with me. Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooringI never once met,To guide her with accents adoringThrough Weippert’s “First Set.” {46} I spent my life’s seasons with pale onesIn Vanity Fair,And she enjoyed hers among hale onesIn salt-smelling air. Maybe she had eyes of deep colour,Maybe they were blue,Maybe as she aged they got duller;That never I knew. She may have had lips like the coral,But I never kissed them,Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel,Nor sought for, nor missed them. Not a word passed of love all our lifetime,Between us, nor thrill;We’d never a husband-and-wife time,For good or for ill. Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal,Lie I and lies she,This never-known lady, eternalCompanion to me!
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