Louisa Sarah Bevington

Then and Now

ONCE the question was to know
Why you came, and why would go,
Once it seem to import so
That I should approve you;
Ay, in lost days dead and dear,
When so often you were here,
I could hope and I could fear;
Now I only love you.

Since your hand hath closed the door,
In my soul for evermore
All is stiller than before;
And the end--who knoweth?
You have gone; to spend your breath,
Haply, on the fields of death
Where the war-fire thundereth
And the palm-tree groweth.

Waves and fates have rolled between,
Things are not that once have been,
Changed the actors, changed the scene
Where the singer stayeth;
If her love hath wrought her woe,
E'en to you, who only know
That it ever hath been so,
Only song betrayeth.