"Ah, dearest, had some happier chance,
The force of fateful circumstance,
Some burning thrill of love divine,
But touched your heart and made you mine,
How had my pulses gladly beat
With love's deep rapture wildly sweet;
How had my life so crowned put forth
Life's proudest strength to prove its worth
For love of you!
"But cruel fate that shapes our ends,
Dark doom that poet love attends—
The fate unhappy Petrarch sung
In fair Italia's burning tongue.
Such fate as, reckless, tears apart
The tendrils of the breaking heart
From every prop where it would twine,
Such cruel fate, alas! is mine
For love of you!
"So when my grave is green to see,
You will not let them say of me:
Her talent was a wasted power,
Her life has failed of fruit and flower;
For you will know the hopeless pain,
That palsied heart and hand and brain—
Will know that life has failed alone
Because a blight was on it thrown
For love of you!"
She dashed the tears from her eyes and sat up, the picture of shame and despair.
"I could have been a better woman if he had been kind to me—if he would but have promised to try to love me!" she muttered, angrily. "But how fast he hurried away, as if he despised me. How I wish I could hate him in return—hate him as I hate his dark-eyed love! It is for her he scorns me. Oh, God! for vengeance on them both!"
[CHAPTER XLVII.]
A TERRIBLE CRIME.
"Deep and dark the flowing river,
Close to the feet like a serpent glides;
Many a secret lost forever
The deep and beautiful water hides!"