This text comes from Wessex Poems and Other Verses, a historical songbook transcribed on Wikisource and reproduced from the pinned revision linked below.
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Goodbye!
I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
Of manhood who deal gently with me here:
Amid the happy people of my time
Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear
Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,
My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
And nothing left for Love to look upon.
1866.