Telling the tale of joy and innocence,
And hope, and peace, and love; recording, too,
With stern fidelity, the thousand wrongs
Worked upon weakness and defencelessness;
The blest occasions trifled o’er or spurned;
All that hath been that ought not to have been,
That might have been so different, that now
Cannot but be irrevocably past!
Thy gangrened heart,
Stripped of its self-worn mask, and spread at last