Do not make haste to condemn me: my will was the will of a woman,-- Fain to be broken by love. Yet unto the last I endeavored What I could to be faithful still to the past and my penance; And as we stood that night in the old Roman garden together-- By the fountain whose passionate tears but now had implored me In his pleading voice--and he waited my answer, I told him All that had been before of delusion and guilt, and conjured him Not to darken his fate with mine. The costly endeavor Only was subtler betrayal. O me, from the pang of confession, Sprang what strange delight, as I tore from its lurking that horror-- Brooded upon so long--with the hope that at last I might see it Through his eyes, unblurred by the tears that disordered my vision! Oh, with what rapturous triumph I humbled my spirit before him, That he might lift me and soothe me, and make that dreary remembrance, All this confused present, seem only some sickness of fancy, Only a morbid folly, no certain and actual trouble! If from that refuge I fled with words of too feeble denial-- Bade him hate me, with sobs that entreated his tenderest pity, Moved mute lips and left the meaningless farewell unuttered-- She that never has loved, alone can wholly condemn me. IV. How could he other than follow? My heart had bidden him follow, Nor had my lips forbidden; and Rome yet glimmered behind me, When my soul yearned towards his from the sudden forlornness of absence. Everywhere his face looked from vanishing glimpses of faces, Everywhere his voice reached my senses in fugitive cadence. Sick, through the storied cities, with wretched hopes, and upbraidings Of my own heart for its hopes, I went from wonder to wonder, Blind to them all, or only beholding them wronged, and related, Through some trick of wayward thought, to myself and my trouble. Not surprise nor regret, but a fierce, precipitate gladness Sent the blood to my throbbing heart when I found him in Venice. "Waiting for you," he whispered; "you would so." I answered him nothing. V. Father, whose humor grows more silent and ever more absent (Changed in all but love for me since the death of my mother), Willing to see me contented at last, and trusting us wholly, Left us together alone in our world of love and of beauty. So, by noon and by night, we two have wandered in Venice, Where the beautiful lives in vivid and constant caprices, Yet, where the charm is so perfect that nothing fantastic surprises More than in dreams, and one's life with the life of the city is blended In a luxurious calm, and the tumult without and beyond it Seems but the emptiest fable of vain aspiration and labor.