HELEN
Reading edition
XXVI
High-born Helen, round your dwelling These twenty years I’ve paced in vain; Haughty beauty, thy lover’s duty Hath been to glory in his pain. High-born Helen, proudly telling Stories of thy cold disdain; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain. These twenty years I’ve lived on tears, Dwelling for ever on a frown; On sighs I’ve fed, your scorn my bread; I perish now you kind are grown. Can I, who loved my beloved, But for the scorn “was in her eye,” Can I be moved for my beloved When she “returns me sigh for sigh?” In stately pride, by my bedside, High-born Helen’s portrait’s hung; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung.
To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her: Helen, grown old, no longer cold, Said, “You to all men I prefer.”
