poem: Yesterday
The last of the three poems written by Eliza Ogilvy in her Morocco-bound book, on her love for William Edmondstoune Aytoun, and her discovery that it was no longer requited.
The poem, previously unpublished, was written in January 1887 on or soon after Eliza’s 65th birthday in a moment of ‘recall and regret’. Yesterday describes the end, ‘the chasm gaping black’, in September 1842.
Yesterday
Surely twas only yesterday
I watched you driving down the hilly road
You had not said the word I hoped you’d say
Forlornly I abode —
Surely twas only yesterday
To dissipate that sense of Good Hap lost
I traced again each pebble of the way
We had together crost
Surely twas only yesterday
I hoped so vainly to regain once more
The rapture of that evanescent May
Which life one moment tore
Surely twas only yesterday
I saw the chasm between us gaping black
And with sad resignation made essay
Of my unaided track —
Not yesterday! Oh no, not yesterday
For well nigh fifty years have come and gone
Since in your hold my young existence lay
You dropped it — and went on
Not yesterday! Oh no, not yesterday
A score of winters beat upon your head
Under the marbles white and granites gray
That eulogise the Dead
Not yesterday! Oh no, not yesterday
All one’s life stretches even to gray hair
Room for a faithful soul to work and pray
Recall - regret - do all things but despair
Reproduced by permission of the Provost and Fellows of Eton College, with the author’s thanks.
© William Owen 2026 - All rights reserved