"The Self Banished" is a poem written by Edmund Waller in about 1645. It was set to music by the baroque composer John Blow in 1700.[1]
It is also one of the first songs written by the English composer Edward Elgar. Composed in 1875, specifically for "soprano or tenor", it was unpublished until recently.
Blow set stanzas 1 and 2. Elgar added a stanza beginning with his own spelling of "Absence".
THE SELF-BANISHED
It is not that I love you less
Than when before your feet I lay:
But to prevent the sad increase
Of hopeless love, I keep away.
In vain! (alas!) for ev'ry thing
Which I have known belong to you,[2]
Your form does to my fancy bring,
And makes my old wounds bleed anew.
Who in the Spring from the new Sun
Already has a fever got,
Too late begins those shafts to shun,
Which Phoebus through his veins has shot.
Too late he would the pain assuage,
And to shadows thick he doth retire;
About with him he bears the rage,[3]
And in his tainted blood the fire.
[{{sic|Absc|ence|hide=y}} is vain for ev'ry thing ::That I have known belong to you, :Your form does to my fancy bring, ::And makes my old wounds bleed anew.]
But vow'd I have, and never must
Your banish'd servant trouble you;
For if I break, you may distrust[5]
The vow I made to love you, too.