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A REJECTED LOVER.
- You “never loved me,” Ada. These slow words
- Dropped softly from your gentle woman‐tongue
- Out of your true and kindly woman‐heart,
- Fell, piercing into mine like very swords
- The sharper for their kindness. Yet no wrong
- Lies to your charge, nor cruelty, nor art,—
- Ev’n when you spoke, I saw the tender tear‐drop start.
- You “never loved me.” No, you never knew,
- You, with youth’s morning fresh upon your soul,
- What ’t is 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 thid breast of mine,
- The breast where—Curse on that fiend‐whispering
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- “It might have been!”—Ada, I will be true
- Unto myself—the self that so loved thine:
- May all life’s pain, like these 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 chldren round your matron knees:
- So, when all this is past, and you and I
- Remember each our youth‐days as an hour
- Of joy—or anguish, one, serene, at ease,
- May come to meet the other’s steadfast eye,
- Thinking, “He loved me well!” clasp hands, and so pass by.
