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[First published 1852. Reprinted 1855.]
I TOO 1 have suffer’d: yet I know | |
| She is not cold, though she seems so: | |
| She is not cold, she is not light; | |
| But our ignoble souls lack might. | |
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| She smiles and smiles, and will not sigh, | 5 |
| While we for hopeless passion die; | |
| Yet she could love, those eyes declare, | |
| Were but men nobler than they are. | |
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| Eagerly once her gracious ken | |
| Was turn’d upon the sons of men. | 10 |
| But light the serious visage grew— | |
| She look’d, and smiled, and saw them through. | |
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| Our petty souls, our strutting wits, | |
| Our labour’d puny passion-fits— | |
| Ah, may she scorn them still, till we | 15 |
| Scorn them as bitterly as she! | |
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| Yet oh, that Fate would let her see | |
| One of some worthier 2 race than we; | |
| One for whose sake she once might prove | |
| How deeply she who scorns can love. | 20 |
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| His eyes be like the starry lights— | |
| His voice like sounds of summer nights— | |
| In all his lovely mien let pierce | |
| The magic of the universe. | |
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| And she to him will reach her hand, | 25 |
| And gazing in his eyes will stand, | |
| And know her friend, and weep for glee, | |
| And cry—Long, long I’ve look’d for thee.— | |
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| Then will she weep—with smiles, till then, | |
| Coldly she mocks the sons of men. | 30 |
| Till then her lovely eyes maintain | |
| Their gay, unwavering, deep disdain. | |
