'Ye few by whom my nature has been weighed In friendship, let me not that name degrade _345 By placing on your hearts the secret load Which crushes mine to dust. There is one road To peace and that is truth, which follow ye! Love sometimes leads astray to misery. Yet think not though subdued--and I may well _350 Say that I am subdued--that the full Hell Within me would infect the untainted breast Of sacred nature with its own unrest; As some perverted beings think to find In scorn or hate a medicine for the mind _355 Which scorn or hate have wounded--O how vain! The dagger heals not but may rend again... Believe that I am ever still the same In creed as in resolve, and what may tame My heart, must leave the understanding free, _360 Or all would sink in this keen agony-- Nor dream that I will join the vulgar cry; Or with my silence sanction tyranny; Or seek a moment's shelter from my pain In any madness which the world calls gain, _365 Ambition or revenge or thoughts as stern As those which make me what I am; or turn To avarice or misanthropy or lust... Heap on me soon, O grave, thy welcome dust! Till then the dungeon may demand its prey, _370 And Poverty and Shame may meet and say-- Halting beside me on the public way-- "That love-devoted youth is ours--let's sit Beside him--he may live some six months yet." Or the red scaffold, as our country bends, _375 May ask some willing victim; or ye friends May fall under some sorrow which this heart Or hand may share or vanquish or avert; I am prepared--in truth, with no proud joy-- To do or suffer aught, as when a boy _380 I did devote to justice and to love My nature, worthless now!... 'I must remove A veil from my pent mind. 'Tis torn aside! O, pallid as Death's dedicated bride, Thou mockery which art sitting by my side, _385 Am I not wan like thee? at the grave's call I haste, invited to thy wedding-ball To greet the ghastly paramour, for whom Thou hast deserted me...and made the tomb Thy bridal bed...But I beside your feet _390 Will lie and watch ye from my winding-sheet-- Thus...wide awake tho' dead...yet stay, O stay! Go not so soon--I know not what I say-- Hear but my reasons...I am mad, I fear, My fancy is o'erwrought...thou art not here... _395 Pale art thou, 'tis most true...but thou art gone, Thy work is finished...I am left alone!-- ... 'Nay, was it I who wooed thee to this breast Which, like a serpent, thou envenomest As in repayment of the warmth it lent? _400 Didst thou not seek me for thine own content? Did not thy love awaken mine? I thought That thou wert she who said, "You kiss me not Ever, I fear you do not love me now"--