“You terrify me, Haydn!” I exclaim’d.
“And you have done far more to me!” he cried.
“You were—Ah me, what were you not?—so pure,
Transparent as the mid-day atmosphere.
Should some red thunderbolt from sunlight burst
And burn all torturing blindness through my eyes,
The night came less foretoken’d! I, who dream’d
That here I gazed on truth, here bent these knees
Upon the very battlements of heaven,—
I to be tript thus from my dear proud trust,
Sent reeling down by such foul-aim’d deceit!—
Strange is it if my jolted brain should slip
The grooves of reason?—if I rave or curse?—
You, who had known my heart, and after that,
And after I had warn’d you of the thing,
And simulating all the while such love,—
You, vowing to abjure me! more than this,
To-day with such cold-blooded, soulless tact,
Soft-stealing, through the door-ways left ajar,
Within the inmost chambers of my heart,
To snare,—as though the victim of a cat
That could be play’d with, trick’d with, kill’d, cast off,—
This heart of mine which, as you might have known,
Was throbbing but to serve you!—Yes, once more,
You gain your end! Once more, your wish is mine.
How can I love?—God help me!—Go you free.”