Who should have searched my deep, unquiet heart,
And soothed it in its agony. Oh no!
Too hard a task to ask this boon of her,
Whose dearest thought seemed but to learn the way
To help to crush—not save.
Oh God! forgive me!
How much of sorrow, sin and shame, my life
Would have been guiltless of, had but the one—
The only one of earth—reached forth her hand,
And with that hand, her heart, to lift me up