University of Virginia Library

You could not understand me, dear, nor see
That all my heart though changeful as the sea
Yearned for the love you were too proud to speak.
Once to have kissed your mouth and leaned my cheek
On yours and heard you tell me that you loved
Seemed all my life was made for, but you proved
Nothing of what I felt: you loved me: I
Could not do more than wonder anxiously
When you would speak; but you, perchance too proud
To meet rebuffs, wrapt in an obscure shroud
Your mind, and so we stood, and stand, apart.
A little violence gains a woman's heart;
Did you know this, I wonder? Once we lay
Where the cliff rising fronts a tranquil bay
And bears some grey stone ruins to the sky;
That afternoon in memory will not die;
Would that it might! We watched the white sails gleam,
The distant foam, while like a pleasant dream
The murmur of the village hummed below:
We were alone, so lonely, that the glow
Of sunset brought our solitude some pain;
Why now I ask did you not kiss me then?
Again our hearts I know were well in tune,
Alone at night in summer by the moon,
When in the languorous silence warm and sweet
We heard the wavelets plashing at our feet:
The moment slipped, it will not now return.
I wonder sometimes now that I discern
Truth, if you really loved me, or I read
Your presence wrongly: some are often led
To dream too much, so when I went with you
And saw broad heaven laid open to my view
You then perhaps were weary of my sight.

I cannot say: I had too much delight.

Or was I cold? Too strong a love does this:
Itself destroys its own intensest bliss;
So when I loved you most, I seemed perchance
Most frigid . . .

Yet we mould not circumstance,
Your fault or mine or irony of fate,
Thus was our love; and now it is too late.