THE MAN WHO FORGOT

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met

I sat upon a gate;

I saw the sun decline and set,

And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way

And roused me from my thought;

I called to him, and showed where lay

A spot I shyly sought.

“A summer-house fair stands hidden where

You see the moonlight thrown;

Go, tell me if within it there

A lady sits alone.”

He half demurred, but took the track,

And silence held the scene;

I saw his figure rambling back;

I asked him if he had been.

“I went just where you said, but found

No summer-house was there:

Beyond the slope‘ tis all bare ground;

Nothing stands anywhere.

“A man asked what my brains were worth;

The house, he said, grew rotten,

And was pulled down before my birth,

And is almost forgotten!”

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;

Forty years’ frost and flower

Had fleeted since I'd used to come

To meet her in that bower.