Irene's Dream
In loving thus, but I will live henceforth
My shadowy life and never look behind.
Friend. His life, too, as it wears, will lose its bloom;
He will meet storm-clouds, like the rest of men,
For all the brilliance of the present hour.
But think not they will bring him back to you,
You are past out of his thick crowded life.
The stage upon his journey left behind
He never will return to.
Irene.Will he not then
Ever think tenderly of my true love?
If in the hurrying battlefield of life
A random hand should strike a limb from me,
I can forgive that wrong, aye, learn one day
To love the hasty wronger; but, oh, tell me
If my own friend beside me in the ranks
Murders me with an ever-bleeding wound,
Must I forgive him? Must I love him still?
Forgive him, yes. If writhing in my pangs
I tore him as wild, wounded creatures tear,
The pain I gave would only double mine.
But—I love him? Ah, that is the torturing pang—
To love that which we scorn, and suffer from it
Oneself, a sense of humbling and disgrace.
I scorn the poor false heart that cheated mine,
The wavering heart that wasted mine away,
My shadowy life and never look behind.
Friend. His life, too, as it wears, will lose its bloom;
He will meet storm-clouds, like the rest of men,
For all the brilliance of the present hour.
But think not they will bring him back to you,
You are past out of his thick crowded life.
The stage upon his journey left behind
He never will return to.
Irene.Will he not then
Ever think tenderly of my true love?
If in the hurrying battlefield of life
A random hand should strike a limb from me,
I can forgive that wrong, aye, learn one day
To love the hasty wronger; but, oh, tell me
If my own friend beside me in the ranks
Murders me with an ever-bleeding wound,
Must I forgive him? Must I love him still?
Forgive him, yes. If writhing in my pangs
I tore him as wild, wounded creatures tear,
The pain I gave would only double mine.
But—I love him? Ah, that is the torturing pang—
To love that which we scorn, and suffer from it
Oneself, a sense of humbling and disgrace.
I scorn the poor false heart that cheated mine,
The wavering heart that wasted mine away,
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