Explore "Thou Art not False, but Thou Art Fickle" by Lord Byron on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Thou art not false, but thou art fickle, / To those thyself so fondly sought; / The tears that thou hast forced to trickle / Are doubly bitter from that thought: / `Tis this which breaks the heart thou grievest / Too well thou lov'st - too soon thou leavest.
The wholly false the heart despises, / And spurns deceiver and deceit; / But she who not a thought disguises, / Whose love is as sincere as sweet, / When she can change who loved so truly, / It feels what mine has felt so newly.
To dream of joy and wake to sorrow / Is doom'd to all who love or live; / And if, when conscious on the morrow, / We scarce our fancy can forgive, / That cheated us in slumber only, / To leave the waking soul more lonely,
What must they feel whom no false vision, / But truest, tenderest passion warm'd? / Sincere, but swift in sad transition; / As if a dream alone had charm'd? / Ah! sure such grief is fancy's scheming, / And all thy change can be but dreaming!