The Man Who Forgot

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met      I sat upon a gate;     I saw the sun decline and set,      And still was fain to wait.     A trotting boy passed up the way      And roused me from my thought;     I called to him, and showed where lay      A spot I shyly sought.     "A summer-house fair stands hidden where      You see the moonlight thrown;     Go, tell me if within it there      A lady sits alone."     He half demurred, but took the track,      And silence held the scene;     I saw his figure rambling back;      I asked him if he had been.     "I went just where you said, but found      No summer-house was there:     Beyond the slope 'tis all bare ground;      Nothing stands anywhere.     "A man asked what my brains were worth;      The house, he said, grew rotten,     And was pulled down before my birth,      And is almost forgotten!"     My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;      Forty years' frost and flower     Had fleeted since I'd used to come      To meet her in that bower.