"Ah! hadst thou liked me less and loved me more,
Through all these summer days of joy and rain,
I had not now been sorrow's heritor,
Or stood a lackey in the House of Pain."
But he had not to grumble: he had been able to love her learnedly in sonnets and gallantly in serenades. He had—
"Stood face to face with Beauty, known indeed
The Love which moves the Sun and all the Stars!"
That was really all that he had needed, but an awakening critical faculty told him that he won more pain than poetry.
"Had my lips been smitten into music by the kisses that but made them bleed,