To ----

THE BROKEN moon lay in the autumn sky,  
 And I lay at thy feet;  
You bent above me; in the silence I  
 Could hear my wild heart beat.  
 
I spoke; my soul was full of trembling fears  
 At what my words would bring:  
You rais’d your face, your eyes were full of tears,  
 As the sweet eyes of Spring.  
 
You kiss’d me then, I worshipp’d at thy feet  
 Upon the shadowy sod.  
Oh, fool, I lov’d thee! lov’d thee, lovely cheat!  
 Better than Fame or God.  
 
My soul leap’d up beneath thy timid kiss;  
 What then to me were groans,  
Or pain, or death? Earth was a round of bliss,  
 I seem’d to walk on thrones.  
 
And you were with me ’mong the rushing wheels,  
 ’Mid Trade’s tumultuous jars;  
And where to awe-struck wilds the Night reveals  
 Her hollow gulfs of stars.  
 
Before your window, as before a shrine,  
 I ’ve knelt ’mong dew-soak’d flowers,  
While distant music-bells, with voices fine,  
 Measur’d the midnight hours.  
 
There came a fearful moment: I was pale,  
 You wept, and never spoke,  
But clung around me as the woodbine frail  
 Clings, pleading, round an oak.  
 
Upon my wrong I steadied up my soul,  
 And flung thee from myself;  
I spurn’d thy love as ’t were a rich man’s dole,—  
 It was my only wealth.  
 
I spurn’d thee! I, who lov’d thee, could have died,  
 That hop’d to call thee “wife,”  
And bear thee, gently-smiling at my side,  
 Through all the shocks of life!  
 
Too late, thy fatal beauty and thy tears,  
 Thy vows, thy passionate breath;  
I ’ll meet thee not in Life, nor in the spheres  
 Made visible by Death.