which this heart
Or hand may share or vanquish or avert;
I am prepared—in truth, with no proud joy—
To do or suffer aught, as when a boy
I did devote to justice and to love
My nature, worthless now!...
‘I must remove
A veil from my pent mind. ’Tis torn aside!
O pallid as Death’s dedicated bride,
Thou mockery which art sitting by my side,
Am I not wan like thee? at the grave’s call
I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball,
To greet the ghastly paramour for whom
Thou hast deserted me…and made the tomb
Thy bridal bed…but I beside your feet
Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet—
Thus…wide-awake though dead…yet stay, oh, stay!
Go not so soon—know not what I say—
Hear but my reasons…I am mad, I fear,
My fancy is o’erwrought…thou art not here;
Pale art thou, ’tis most true—but thou art gone,
Thy work is finished—I am left alone.
* * * * *
‘Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast,
Which like a serpent thou envenomest
As in repayment of the warmth it lent?
Didst thou not seek me for thine own content?
Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
That thou wert she who said “You kiss me not
Ever; I fear you do not love me now”—
In truth I loved even to my overthrow
Her who would fain forget these words; but they
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
* * * * *
‘You say that I am proud—that when I speak
My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break
The spirit it expresses.—Never one
Humbled himself before, as I have done!
Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
Turns, though it wound not—then with prostrate head
Sinks in the dust and writhes like me—and dies?
No: wears a living death of agonies!
As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,
Slow, ever-moving, making moments be
As mine seem,—each an immortality!
* * * * *
‘That you had never seen me—never heard
My voice, and more than all had ne’er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace—
That your eyes ne’er had lied love in my face—
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their bleeding root
With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne’er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
To disunite in horror—these were not
With thee like some suppressed and hideous thought
Which flits athwart our musings but can find
No rest within a pure and gentle mind;
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And cearedst my memory o’er them,—for I heard
And can forget not…they were ministered
One after one, those curses. Mix them up
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
And they will make one blessing, which thou ne’er
Didst imprecate for on me,—death.
* * * * *
‘It were
A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
If such can love, to make that love the fuel
Of the mind’s hell—hate, scorn, remorse, despair;
But me—whose heart a stranger’s tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see
The absent with the glance of fantasy,
And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
Me—who am as a nerve o’er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of this earth,
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold—that thou on me
Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony—
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love’s too partial praise—Let none relent
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same
They seek…for thou on me look’dst so, and so—
And
