“You were—Ah me, what were you not?—so pure,
Transparent as the mid-day atmosphere.
Should some red thunderbolt from sunlight burst
And burn all torturing blindness through my eyes,
The night came less foretoken’d! I, who dream’d
That here I gazed on truth, here bent these knees
Upon the very battlements of heaven,—
I to be tript thus from my dear proud trust,
Sent reeling down by such foul-aim’d deceit!—
Strange is it if my jolted brain should slip