O my earliest love, who, ere I number'd
Ten sweet summers, made my bosom thrill!
Will a swallow--or a swift, or some bird -
Fly to her and say, I love her still?

Say my life's a desert drear and arid,
To its one green spot I aye recur:
Never, never--although three times married -
Have I cared a jot for aught but her.

No, mine own! though early forced to leave you,
Still my heart was there where first we met;
In those "Lodgings with an ample sea-view,"
Which were, forty years ago, "To Let."

There I saw her first, our landlord's oldest
Little daughter. On a thing so fair
Thou, O Sun,--who (so they say) beholdest
Everything,--hast gazed, I tell thee, ne'er.

There she sat--so near me, yet remoter
Than a star--a blue-eyed bashful imp:
On her lap she held a happy bloater,
'Twixt her lips a yet more happy shrimp.

And I loved her, and our troth we plighted
On the morrow by the shingly shore: