Now the end's coming; to be sure, it must Have ended sometime! Tush, why need I speak Their foolish speech? I cannot bring to mind One half of it, beside; and do not care For old Natalia now, nor any of them. Oh, you--what are you?--if I do not try To say the words Natalia made me learn, To please your friends,--it is to keep myself Where your voice lifted me, by letting that Proceed: but can it? Even you, perhaps, Cannot take up, now you have once let fall, The music's life, and me along with that-- No, or you would! We'll stay, then, as we are: Above the world. You creature with the eyes! If I could look forever up to them, As now you let me,--I believe, all sin, All memory of wrong done, suffering borne, Would drop down, low and lower, to the earth Whence all that's low comes, and there touch and stay --Never to overtake the rest of me, All that, unspotted, reaches up to you, Drawn by those eyes! What rises is myself, Not me the shame and suffering; but they sink, Are left, I rise above them. Keep me so, Above the world! But you sink, for your eyes Are altering--altered! Stay--"I love you, love" ... I could prevent it if I understood: More of your words to me: was 't in the tone Or the words, your power? Or stay--I will repeat Their speech, if that contents you! Only change No more, and I shall find it presently Far back here, in the brain yourself filled up. Natalia threatened me that harm should follow Unless I spoke their lesson to the end, But harm to me, I thought she meant, not you. Your friends,--Natalia said they were your friends And meant you well,--because, I doubted it, Observing (what was very strange to see) On every face, so different in all else, The same smile girls like me are used to bear, But never men, men cannot stoop so low; Yet your friends, speaking of you, used that smile, That hateful smirk of boundless self-conceit Which seems to take possession of the world And make of God a tame confederate, Purveyor to their appetites ... you know! But still Natalia said they were your friends, And they assented though they smiled the more, And all came round me,--that thin Englishman With light lank hair seemed leader of the rest; He held a paper--"What we want," said he, Ending some explanation to his friends-- "Is something slow, involved and mystical, To hold Jules long in doubt, yet take his taste And lure him on until, at innermost Where he seeks sweetness' soul, he may find--this! --As in the apple's core, the noisome fly: For insects on the rind are seen at once, And brushed aside as soon, but this is found Only when on the lips or loathing tongue." And so he read what I have got by heart: