A REJECTED LOVER.

You 'never loved me,' Ada!—Those slow words Dropped softly from your gentle woman's tongue, Out of your true and tender woman's heart, Dropped—piercing into mine like very swords, The sharper for their brightness! Yet no wrong Lies to your charge; nor cruelty, nor art; Even while you spoke, I saw the ready tear-drop start. You 'never loved me?'—No, you never knew— You, with youth's dews yet glittering on your soul— What 'tis to love. Slow, drop by drop, to pour Our life's whole essence, perfumed through and through With all the best we have, or can control, For the libation; cast it down before Your feet—then lift the goblet, dry for evermore! I shall not die, as foolish lovers do: A man's heart beats beneath this breast of mine; The breast where—Curse on that fiend's whispering, 'It might have been!'—Ada, I will be true Unto myself—the self that worshipped thine. May all life's pain, like those few tears that spring For me—glance off as rain-drops from my white dove's wing! May you live long, some good man's bosom-flower, And gather children round your matron knees! Then, when all this is past, and you and I Remember each our youth but as an hour Of joy—or torture; one, serene, at ease, May meet the other's grave yet steadfast eye, Thinking, 'He loved me well!'—clasp hands, and so pass by.