TO BE FORGIVEN.

I call thee “love”—“my sweet, my dearest love,” Nor feel it bold, nor fear it a deceit:

Yet I forget not that, in realms above, The thrones of Seraphs are beneath thy feet.

If Queen of angels thou, of hearts no less: And so of mine—a poet’s, which must needs

Adore to all melodious excess What cannot sate the rapture that it feeds.

And then thou art my Mother: God’s, yet mine! Of mothers, as of virgins, first and best;

And I as tenderly, intimately thine As He, my Brother, carried at the breast.

My Mother! ‘Tis enough. If mine the right To call thee this, much more to muse and sigh

All other honeyed names. A slave, I might— A son, I must. And both of these am I.