Tune of the Day: Oh! No, I'll Never Mention Her
This song was composed by English poet, dramatist and songwriter Thomas Haynes Bayly.
Oh, no! we never mention her, her name is never heard;
My lips are now forbid to speak that once familiar word:
From sport to sport they hurry me, to banish my regret;
And when they win a smile from me, they think that I forget.
They bid me seek in change of scene the charms that others see;
But were I in a foreign land, they'd find no change in me.
'Tis true that I behold no more the valley where we met,
I do not see the hawthorn-tree; but how can I forget?
For oh! there are so many things recall the past to me,—
The breeze upon the sunny hills, the billows of the sea;
The rosy tint that decks the sky before the sun is set;—
Ay, every leaf I look upon forbids me to forget.
They tell me she is happy now, the gayest of the gay;
They hint that she forgets me too,—I heed not what they say:
Perhaps like me she struggles with each feeling of regret;
But if she loves as I have loved, she never can forget.
The present arrangement for two flutes appeared with the title “Oh! No I'll Never Mention Her” in Blake's Young Flutist's Magazine, published in 1833.