I shall be—thine adorer! Well,—this love.
Vain, frantic, guilty, if thou wilt, became
A fountain of ambition, and a bright hope;
I thought of tales that by the winter hearth
Old gossips tell,—how maidens sprung from kings
Have stooped from their high sphere; how Love, like Death,
Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook
Beside the sceptre. Thus I made my home
In the soft palace of a fairy Future!
My father died; and I, the peasant-born,