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 | Plays and poems |  |
438
[I do not sorrow that thy love was cast]
I do not sorrow that thy love was castOn one unworthy of thy purer thought;
Nor that the promise of thy youth was brought
To barren issue by the deadly blast
That plagued the heart to which thy heart held fast,
And in the rarest gift of nature wrought
A noxious canker, mocking thee who sought
To find a sweetness in it. If the past
Were passed indeed; and thou, away from me,
Couldst gather bloom, and for the future nurse
Thy withered youth to beauty; or rehearse,
Some day, the moral of thy grief, and be
From the infection of my influence free,—
'T were well, but I pursue thee like a curse.
| Plays and poems | |