Who am I, who lost so much to Love,
And lose much to Him still?
I stood on a pedestal above,
And crashed down from the windowsill.
Who am I, that for His sake lose time,
And wit, and manners, I,
Who could have given more to rhyme
That served me better? Fie!
Fie, fie, madam, rest your powers,
Deny that in those fruitless hours
You didn't sit by the radiator,
Cold for your lack of care, and to the heart,
Beaten by your own stern cruelty?
How like a gladiator
You sought your doom, for a greater part,
Called idle indulgent torture "duty"?
Deny the useless minutes spent
Searching for a sign in nothing.
Defy the fact, intently bent,
That you made Chaos "something".
Oh I, who on my knees did weep,
And sometimes dreamt revenge
Upon the object that my sleep
Abhorred, isn't it strange,
That all the blame in all this head-long history,
Should rest upon the wounded, me?
Because I cannot help but choose to love,
As my heart's mistress, though my fancies move
According to their spheres, but I
Could be less cruel to her whose hand does feed me,
I could be my own knight and wave imagined scoundrels
Into air, much less dream and die
Upon the sword I meant to cut the heart that could precede me
And mine. Life, I thought, gave me the mandrels,
But truth be so - Eros, oh errors,
I have bent my back in your service,
And by my own will,
For loved I truly, I should be whole still.