Read "I Shall Not Forget" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
I shall not forget you. The years may be tender, / But vain are their efforts to soften my smart; / And the strong hands of Time are too feeble and slender / To garland the grave that is made in my heart. / Your image is ever about me -- before me, / Your voice floats abroad on the voice of the wind; / And the spell of your presence, in absence, is o'er me, / And the dead of the past, in the present I find.
I cannot forget you. The one boon ungiven, / The boon of your love, is the cross that I bear. / In the midnight of sorrow, I vainly have striven / To crush in my heart the sweet image hid there; / To banish the beautiful dreams that are thronging / The halls of my memory -- dreams worse than vain; / For the one drop withheld, I am thirsting and longing, / For the one joy denied, I am weeping in pain.