'That you had never seen me--never heard _420
My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace--
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face--
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their
bleeding
root _425
With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
To disunite in horror--these were not
With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought
Which flits athwart our musings, but can find _430
No rest within a pure and gentle mind.
Shelley
Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought
That thou wert she who said, "You kiss me not
Ever, I fear you do not love me now"--
In truth I loved even to my overthrow _405
Her, who would fain forget these words: but they
Cling to her mind, and cannot pass away.
...
'You say that I am proud--that when I speak
My lip is tortured with the wrongs which break
The spirit it expresses...Never one _410
Humbled himself before, as I have done!
Even the instinctive worm on which we tread
Turns, though it wound not--then with prostrate head
Sinks in the dusk and writhes like me--and dies?
No: wears a living death of agonies! _415
As the slow shadows of the pointed grass
Mark the eternal periods, his pangs pass,
Slow, ever-moving,--making moments be
As mine seem--each an immortality!
...
'That you had never seen me--never heard _420
My voice, and more than all had ne'er endured
The deep pollution of my loathed embrace--
That your eyes ne'er had lied love in my face--
That, like some maniac monk, I had torn out
The nerves of manhood by their
bleeding
root _425
With mine own quivering fingers, so that ne'er
Our hearts had for a moment mingled there
To disunite in horror--these were not
With thee, like some suppressed and hideous thought
Which flits athwart our musings, but can find _430
No rest within a pure and gentle mind.
..
Thou sealedst them with many a bare broad word,
And searedst my memory o'er them,--for I heard
And can forget not...they were ministered
One after one, those curses. Mix them up _435
Like self-destroying poisons in one cup,
And they will make one blessing which thou ne'er
Didst imprecate for, on me,--death.
...
'It were
A cruel punishment for one most cruel,
If such can love, to make that love the fuel _440
Of the mind's hell; hate, scorn, remorse, despair:
But ME--whose heart a stranger's tear might wear
As water-drops the sandy fountain-stone,
Who loved and pitied all things, and could moan
For woes which others hear not, and could see _445
The absent with the glance of phantasy,
And with the poor and trampled sit and weep,
Following the captive to his dungeon deep;
ME--who am as a nerve o'er which do creep
The else unfelt oppressions of this earth, _450
And was to thee the flame upon thy hearth,
When all beside was cold--that thou on me
Shouldst rain these plagues of blistering agony--
Such curses are from lips once eloquent
With love's too partial praise--let none relent _455
Who intend deeds too dreadful for a name
Henceforth, if an example for the same
They seek...for thou on me lookedst so, and so--
And didst speak thus..
