Hand in Hand/To Proteus, on Reading his Love-Sonnets

by Alice MacDonald Kipling

To Proteus, on Reading his
Love-Sonnets

I

I WILL not tell you which I love the best

Of all your sonnets, for in telling this
I should tell more, and all would be confessed,
That I so long have hidden in my breast,
My soul’s sad secret, my heart’s poisoned bliss.
Nor will I whisper, though you bend your cur
To catch my murmured word; yet fearing lest
This silence seem ungrateful, you shall hear
That one there is that with regretful pain,
As of a memory wakened from its sleep,
Filled both mine eyes with tears, and once again
I wept, who for so long have ceased to weep.
Take back the book, I am grown calm and sage,
There is no tell-tale tear-drop on the page.