LXXXVI

MY hope had been, that I might find in thee The soul’s ideal, as my love’s recompense, That Heaven her fairest flowers might dispense, In prodigal profusion unto me. But with Reality’s cold eyes I see How different doth fate, in truth, compense The disappointment of love’s blighted sense; And turn to rhymes the hope that cannot be. Oh, if thou shouldst outlive my broken heart, And in compassion see thy lover dead, And once behold on earth his crumbling bones, Thou wouldst find in these living lines a part Of what thou hast flung from thee, and must read Love’s epitaph upon the moss-grown stones.