Thomas Haynes Bayly (1797–1839)

ROUND my own pretty rose I have hovered all day,

I have seen its sweet leaves one by one fall away:

They are gone, they are gone; but I go not with them,

I linger to weep o’er its desolate stem.

They say if I rove to the south I shall meet

With hundreds of roses more fair and more sweet;

But my heart, when I’m tempted to wander, replies,

Here my first love, my last love, my only love lies.

When the last leaf is withered, and falls to the earth,

The false one to southerly climes may fly forth;

But truth cannot fly from his sorrows: he dies,

Where his first love, his last love, his only love lies.