 | The Triumph of Love |  |
XVI
Shall I thank God that I may never kneel,In love's impatient ardour, at thy feet?
Shall I thank God that I may never feel
Thy beating bosom slowly cease to beat?
What if a voice had whispered, “Time flies fast:
Kiss her dark eyes: uncoil each golden tress:
But know that she will turn from thee at last,
And spurn thee for thy very love's excess.”
Should I have shrunk, benumbed with chilling fears,
Shrunk from my doom, shrunk from thy warm embrace?
Oh never so! Nought in the coming years
Had I foreseen but thy bewitching face;
Nought but thine eyes piercing with shafts of light
The hidden future's rolling clouds of night.
| The Triumph of Love | |