Tranquilla

I LOVE thee yet! for nature’s ties are stronger

Than I had dreamed! I strove to break the chain,

Feeling I had no right to love thee longer;

But, in its greatest agony and pain,

My heart turned to thee, though I scorned and hated

Thy weakness and thy sin. Although, to me,

Thou wert the very thing I most abhorred,

In spite of all my wrath, my agony,

My heart turned to thee, and I could have wept

Hot tears upon thy bosom for my wrongs.

Within thy circling arms I could have slept;

For slumber had been banished from me long.

I do forgive thee,—yet the world I ’d give

Could I forget, even as I forgive.