Lucile :: :: University of Virginia Library

‘Madam,’—thus he began with a voice reassur'd—
‘You see that your latest command has secur'd
‘My immediate obedience—presuming I may
‘Consider my freedom restor'd from this day’—

‘I had thought,’ said Lucile, with a smile gay yet sad,
‘That your freedom from me not a fetter has had.
‘Indeed!...in my chains have you rested till now?
‘I had not so flatter'd myself, I avow!’

‘For Heaven's sake, Madam,’ Lord Alfred replied,
‘Do not jest! has this moment no sadness?’ he sigh'd.

‘'Tis an ancient tradition,’ she answer'd, ‘a tale
‘Often told—a position too sure to prevail
‘In the end of all legends of love. If we wrote,
‘When we first love, foreseeing that hour yet remote

‘Wherein of necessity each would recall
‘From the other the poor foolish records of all
‘Those emotions, whose pain, when recorded, seem'd bliss,
‘Should we write as we wrote? But one thinks not of this!
‘At twenty (who does not at twenty?) we write
‘Believing eternal the frail vows we plight;
‘And we smile with a confident pity, above
‘The vulgar results of all poor human love:
‘For we deem, with that vanity common to youth,
‘Because what we feel in our bosoms, in truth,
‘Is novel to us—that 'tis novel to earth,
‘And will prove the exception, in durance and worth,
‘To the great law to which all on earth must incline.
‘The error was noble, the vanity fine!
‘Shall we blame it because we survive it? ah, no;
‘'Twas the youth of our youth, my lord, is it not so?’