And keep my manhood pure.
It was a dream!
I only deemed it but her duty here;
I may have asked too much! ’Tis over now.
The sharpest strife is o’er, and I must be
Sufficient to myself. The past can ne’er
Recall itself to me, but with my tears,
That have been tears of blood. Would that the fate
Of the Olympus-stricken Niobe
Had been mine also—that I had been marble.