Or meet the playful forehead with her own; With threatening horn, to guard approach of harm; And watch, with ceaseless care, the charge in sleep. Her careful love continues, till the calf Has grown beyond her need, and ceases then. A mother loves because it is her child: This is the surest reason you could give. Th’ affection is spontaneous in her breast, But fed and strengthened by his life, if good. The opposites to love you named, affect Her love, by not an injury done to Self, But by their evil, which her soul abhors. Her son’s antagonism’s not to her, But to the good she loves. Her heart withdraws Its twining tendrils from unworthiness. As usual, you select supposed effects, And then assume their causes. Could you see The mother’s heart, you’d find the loss of love Caused not by wrong to her, but wrong abstract Developed in the concrete deeds of crime. Her love is governed by a moral sense, Or idea of the good; the people’s thought About herself comes in as after-part. Bad treatment to herself, although it pain, Deals not a fatal blow to love, except As showing lack of principle in him. And so your lover is not hurt in Self, But moral sense. The loved one’s perfidy, And not her ridicule, beheads your love; Her stunning words were playful pleasantry, Did they not show the baseness of the heart. Indeed, to turn your reasoning on yourself, Her manner even towards you has not changed, And were you present, she would still seem yours; Her eaves-dropped words do not affect the Self, Save as they show her falsity of heart. And tossing on your pillow, through the night, The crushing thought of wrecked integrity Gives deeper pain than all her ridicule. And Self, though pained at thought of being duped, Enjoys relief in thought of its escape. To show that Love is built on higher grounds Than paltry good for Self; that it must have, As corner-stone, a percept of the good, Existing in the object loved, suppose You’re on the topmost height of wildest love, Your arm around her, and your lingering kiss Upon her lips; and Self is king of love. She, nestling on your shoulder, finds ’tis wrong, That love, however true, may grow too warm; That every kiss, however pure, abstracts Some little part from maiden modesty, And steals a pebble from her honor’s wall And rising with the firm resolve, says, “Cease, Unwind your arm, restrain your fervid lips; It may be wrong, and right is surely safe!” Now though the Self is bitterly denied, The rapturous clasp and tender kiss forbid, Is not your love increased a thousand-fold? Do not you feel intensely gratified At this assurance of her moral worth? And would you, for the world, breath aught to cause Her pain, or least regret for her resolve?