NE'ER lover spake in tenderer words, While mine were calm, unbroken; Though I suffered all the pain I gave In the No, so firmly spoken. I marvel what he would think of me, Who called it a cruel sentence, If he knew I had almost learned to-day What it is to feel repentance. For it seems like a strange perversity, And blind beyond excusing, To lose the thing we could have kept, And after, mourn the losing. And this, the prize I might have won, Was worth a queen's obtaining; And one, if far beyond my reach, I had sighed, perchance, for gaining. And I know -- ah! no one knows so well, Though my heart is far from breaking -- 'T was a loving heart, and an honest hand, I might have had for the taking. And yet, though never one beside Has place in my thought above him, I only like him when he is by, 'T is when he is gone I love him. Sadly of absence poets sing, And timid lovers fear it; But an idol has been worshiped less Sometimes when we came too near it. And for him my fancy throws to-day A thousand graces o 'er him; For he seems a god when he stands afar And I kneel in my thought before him. But if he were here, and knelt to me With a lover's fond persistence, Would the halo brighten to my eyes That crowns him now in the distance? Could I change the words I have said, and say Till one of us two shall perish, Forsaking others, I take this man Alone, to love and to cherish? Alas! whatever beside to-day I might dream like a fond romancer, I know my heart so well that I know I should give him the self-same answer. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...LAMENT FOR THE MAKARIS [WHEN HE WAS SEIK] by WILLIAM DUNBAR THE FORERUNNERS by GEORGE HERBERT THE SKELETON IN ARMOR by HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW THE FEILIRE OF ADAMNAN by ADAMNAN TO DR. PRIESTLEY. DEC. 29, 1792 by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD THE IVORY GATE; LOVE-IN-IDLENESS by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES |