I shall not forget you. The years may be tender, <br />But vain are their efforts to soften my smart; <br />And the strong hands of Time are too feeble and slender <br />To garland the grave that is made in my heart. <br /> <br />Your image is ever about me, before me, <br />Your voice floats abroad on the voice of the wind; <br />And the spell of your presence, in absence, is o'er me, <br />And the dead of the past, in the present I find. <br /> <br />I cannot forget you. The one boon ungiven, <br />The boon of your love, is the cross that I bear. <br />In the midnight of sorrow I vainly have striven <br />To crush in my heart the sweet image hid there; <br /> <br />To banish the beautiful dreams that are thronging <br />The halls of my memory, dreams worse than vain; <br />For the one drop withheld, I am thirsting and longing, <br />For the one joy denied, I am weeping in pain. <br /> <br />I would not forget you. I live to remember <br />The beautiful hopes that bloomed but to decay, <br />And brighter than June glows the bleakest December, <br />When peopled with ghosts of the dreams passed away. <br /> <br />Once loving you truly, I love you forever; <br />I mourn not in weak, idle grief for the past; <br />But the love in my bosom can never, oh never <br />Pass out, or another pass in, first or last.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/i-shall-not-forget/
