The Triumph of Love :: :: University of Virginia Library

For thy dear sake these wounds must ever bleed,
Must ever throb, must ever wring my soul;
For so alone will love at last be freed
From the dark prison-house of Fate's control.
Were Time to change each wound into a scar,
To staunch its bleeding and allay its pain,
Then had I waged an unavailing war,
And suffered fruitless pangs and bled in vain.
Take hence thy bandages O Time! take hence
Thy cruel anodynes. I breathe no prayer
But this, to feel with ever quickened sense
The anguish of an ever new despair.
For anguish is the pulse of passion's breast;
And love lies pillowed on the soul's unrest.