You 'never loved me,' Ada!--Those slow words
Dropped softly from your gentle woman's tongue,
Out of your true and tender woman's heart,
Dropped--piercing into mine like very swords,
The sharper for their brightness! Yet no wrong
Lies to your charge; nor cruelty, nor art;
Even while you spoke, I saw the ready tear-drop start.
You 'never loved me?'--No, you never knew--
You, with youth's dews yet glittering on your soul--
What 'tis _to love_. Slow, drop by drop, to pour
Our life's whole essence, perfumed through and through
With all the best we have, or can control,
For the libation; cast it down before
Your feet--then lift the goblet, dry for evermore!
I shall not die, as foolish lovers do:
A man's heart beats beneath this breast of mine;
The breast where--Curse on that fiend's whispering,
'_It might have been!_'--Ada, I will be true
Unto myself--the self that worshipped thine.
May all life's pain, like those few tears that spring
For me--glance off as rain-drops from my white dove's wing!
May you live long, some good man's bosom-flower,
And gather children round your matron knees!
Then, when all this is past, and you and I
Remember each our youth but as an hour
Of joy--or torture; one, serene, at ease,
May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye,
Thinking, 'He loved me well!'--clasp hands, and so pass by.