Many our happy hours have been
By shining sun or showery weather,
While lingering in some novel scene
Our eager feet explored together.
The fertile isles of placid Seine
That glimmer’d in the Evening light
The forest shades of tangled green
And verdant hills with cliffs of white.
Rouen to British bosoms dear
And Paris with its spell of joy,
Its shaded walks and fragrant air,
And domes that glitter in the sky.
And Brussels — yet the laugh forbear
If mean its pomp to English sight,
And own the festal arches fair,
The laurel bowers, the evening light.
And more than all, that glorious sight,
Which still I paus’d and turn’d to view
By Briton ne’er to be forgot
The sacred turf of Waterloo.
All these upon my mind return,
Say, Wanderer! do they dwell in thine,
Or thinkest thou, on this conscious morn,
Of thy deserted Valentine.
Hard when we long had roam’d delighted
Till each became more dearly known
That we, in stranger lands united,
Should thus be sever’d in our own.
E. A. P.
Feby 14 1818