will requite
The kind--and thee the most of all.
Then let the ties of baffled love
Be broken--thine will never break;
Thy heart can feel--but will not move;
Thy soul, though soft, will never shake.
And these, when all was lost beside,
Were found and still are fixed in thee:--
And bearing still a breast so tried,
Earth is no desert--ev'n to me.

[First published, _Poems_, 1816.]

FOOTNOTES:

[432] {537} ["He there (Byron, in his _Memoranda_) described, and in a
manner whose sincerity there was no doubting, the swell of tender
recollections, under the influence of which, as he sat one night musing
in the study, these stanzas were produced,--the tears, as he said,
falling fast over the paper as he wrote them."--_Life_, p. 302.

It must have been a fair and _complete_ copy that Moore saw (see _Life_,
p. 302, note 3). There are no tear-marks on this (the first draft, sold
at Sotheby's, April 11, 1885) draft, which must be the _first_, for it
is incomplete, and every line (almost) tortured with alterations.

"Fare Thee Well!" was printed in Leigh Hunt's _Examiner_, April 21,
1816, at the end of an article (by L. H.) entitled "Distressing
Circumstances in High Life." The text there has two readings different
from that of the pamphlet, viz.--

_Examiner:_ "Than the soft one which embraced me."
Pamphlet: "Than the one which once embraced me."
_Examiner:_ "Yet the thoughts we cannot bridle."
Pamphlet: "But," etc.

--_MS. Notes taken by the late J. Dykes Campbell at Sotheby's, April 18,
1890, and re-transcribed for Mr. Murray, June 15, 1894._

A final proof, dated April 7, 1816, was endorsed by Murray, "Correct 50
copies as early as you can to-morrow."]

[rh] The motto was prefixed in _Poems_, 1816.

[ri] {538} _Thou my breast laid bare before thee_.--[MS. erased.]

[rj] _Not a thought is pondering on thee_.--[MS, erased.]

[433] [Lines 13-20 do not appear in an early copy dated March 18, 1816.
They were added on the margin of a proof dated April 4, 1816.]

[rk] {539} Net result of many alterations.

[rl] _And the lasting thought_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rm] ----_of deadlier sorrow_.--[MS. erased.]

[rn] _Every future night and morrow_.--[MS. erased.]

[ro] _Still thy heart_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rp] _All my follies_----.--[MS. erased.]

[rq] ----_which not the world could bow_.--[MS.]

[rr] _Falls a