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

"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.