The world has taken you, the world has won. Accursed be the world! Was it well done To give the world, once more, its victory? Was it well done to let you go from me? For your own sake I suffered you to go: Did I do right, for your sake? Say not no, Say not that I have left you to your fate, That I have made my own life desolate, Casting adrift upon a shoreless tide, While you, blind, shipwrecked, and without a guide, Fasting and footsore, desolately went Across an undiscovered continent. Should I have held you fast, in spite of all? Perchance. Yet it was well, whate'er befall, To have renounced love, merely for love's sake. Ah, when in lonely nights I lie awake, And hear the windy voices of the rain, At least I shall not hear your voice complain "If you had loved me, you had let me go!" Have we not loved and sorrowed? and we know It is well to have loved and sorrowed and not striven, And to endure hell, having passed through heaven, To know what heaven is, having passed through hell. Love's moment is a moment of farewell, Sorrow and weariness are all our years, And life is full of sighing, and much tears. |