Glanced off from things it does not penetrate.
So, more to shock her than for sympathy,
My thought play’d round the surface of her life:
It had been shaped so—to so smooth a thing—
I burn’d to warp it of complacency.
Oft, though unconscious of the least mistruth,
I feign’d a fall in fancied depths of ill,
And mock’d that I might hear her call me thence;
And learn’d therein to envy some the rake.
For what a charm it were to hear—not so?