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THOUGH the day of my destinys over, | |
And the star of my fate hath declined, | |
Thy soft heart refused to discover | |
The faults which so many could find; | |
Though thy soul with my grief was acquainted, | 5 |
It shrunk not to share it with me, | |
And the love which my spirit hath painted | |
It never hath found but in thee. | |
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Then when nature around me is smiling, | |
The last smile which answers to mine, | 10 |
I do not believe it beguiling, | |
Because it reminds me of thine; | |
And when winds are at war with the ocean, | |
As the breasts I believed in with me, | |
If their billows excite an emotion, | 15 |
It is that they bear me from thee. | |
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Though the rock of my last hope is shiverd, | |
And its fragments are sunk in the wave, | |
Though I feel that my soul is deliverd | |
To painit shall not be its slave. | 20 |
There is many a pang to pursue me: | |
They may crush, but they shall not contemn: | |
They may torture, but shall not subdue me; | |
Tis of thee that I thinknot of them. | |
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Though human, thou didst not deceive me, | 25 |
Though woman, thou didst not forsake, | |
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me, | |
Though slanderd, thou never couldst shake; | |
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, | |
Though parted, it was not to fly, | 30 |
Though watchful, twas not to defame me, | |
Nor mute, that the world might belie. | |
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Yet I blame not the world, nor despise it, | |
Nor the war of the many with one; | |
If my soul was not fitted to prize it, | 35 |
Twas folly not sooner to shun: | |
And if dearly that error hath cost me, | |
And more than I once could foresee, | |
I have found that, whatever it lost me, | |
It could not deprive me of thee. | 40 |
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From the wreck of the past, which hath perishd, | |
Thus much I at least may recall, | |
It hath taught me that what I most cherishd | |
Deserved to be dearest of all: | |
In the desert a fountain is springing, | 45 |
In the wide waste there still is a tree, | |
And a bird in the solitude singing, | |
Which speaks to my spirit of thee. July 24, 1816. | |
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