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.