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147
LOVE AND PITY
Are you too tender-hearted to be true?True to your love, to me and your own soul?
Will you for pity give what is love's due
And leave love lorn and begging for a dole?
Then pity is a thief, that steals love's purse
To squander in dishonest charity;
Then love is outcast, with the exile's curse
Who sees his varlets loot his seigneury.
Is love so hard it recks not where I lie,
While pity melts at aught that he endures?
I deserve nothing, save that you ensky
No other with those vesper lips of yours—
I deserve nothing; but your love of me
Deserves of you the courage to be free.
August, 1898.
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