Page:Poems Barrett.djvu/165

Which had passed, in deadly rushing, into forms of abstract truth,—
With a logic agonising through unfit denunciation,—
And with youth's own anguish turning grimly grey the hairs of youth,—

With the sense accursed and instant, that if even I spake wisely,
I spake basely—using truth,—if what I spake, indeed was true—
To avenge wrong on a woman—her, who sate there weighing nicely
A poor manhood's worth, found guilty of such deeds as I could do!—

With such wrong and woe exhausted—what I suffered and occasioned,—
As a wild horse, through a city, runs with lightning in his eyes,
And then dashing at a church's cold and passive wall, impassioned,
Strikes the death into his burning brain, and blindly drops and dies—

So I fell, struck down before her! Do you blame me, friend, for weakness?
'Twas my strength of passion slew me!—fell before her like a stone;
Fast the dreadful world rolled from me, on its roaring wheels of blackness!
When the light came I was lying in this chamber—and alone.

Oh, of course, she charged her lacqueys to bear out the sickly burden,
And to cast it from her scornful sight—but not beyond the gate—
She is too kind to be cruel, and too haughty not to pardon
Such a man as I—'twere something to be level to her hate.