And when winds are at war with the ocean,
As the breasts I believed in with me,[1]
If their billows excite an emotion,
It is that they bear me from Thee.
III.
Though the rock of my last Hope is shivered,[2]
And its fragments are sunk in the wave,
Though I feel that my soul is delivered
To Pain—it shall not be its slave.
There is many a pang to pursue me:
They may crush, but they shall not contemn;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
'Tis of Thee that I think—not of them.[3]
IV.
Though human, thou didst not deceive me,
Though woman, thou didst not forsake,
Though loved, thou forborest to grieve me,
Though slandered, thou never couldst shake;[4][5]
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me,
Though parted, it was not to fly,
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me,
Nor mute, that the world might belie.[6]
V.
Yet I blame not the World, nor despise it,
- ↑ As the breasts I reposed in with me.—[MS.]
- ↑
Though the rock of my young hope is shivered,
And its fragments lie sunk in the wave.—[MS. erased.] - ↑
There is many a pang to pursue me,
And many a peril to stem;
They may torture, but shall not subdue me;
They may crush, but they shall not contemn.—[MS. erased.]
And I think not of thee but of them.—[MS. erased.] - ↑ Though tempted ——.—[MS.]
- ↑ [Compare Childe Harold, Canto III. stanzas liii., iv., Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 247, 248, note 1.]
- ↑
Though watchful, 'twas but to reclaim me,
Nor, silent, to sanction a lie.—[MS.]
