Why my truant thoughts return
O’er the pleasing past to stray,
Why my fancy wilt thou mourn
The lost delights of yesterday!
Light-wing’d minutes, laughing hours,
Blushing youth, and pleasure gay,
Careless ease and social pow’rs,
Are ye too fled with yesterday!
Scenes of vanish’d bliss adieu!
Flit ye airy shapes away!
Hope gives a morrow to my view
Which looks not back on yesterday!
From: Holford, Miss, Poems, 1811, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown: London, pp. 109-110.
(https://archive.org/stream/poemsmiss00holfiala#page/108/mode/2up)
Date: 1811
By: Margaret Holford Hodson (1778-1852)