loved, Sir--used to meet:
How sad and mad and bad it was--
But then, how it was sweet!"

They did not marry; and the clergyman shall have no further and no other
"confession"--if he calls this one! It is the meaning of the man's life:
that is all.

In _Confessions_, the story is done; the man is dying. In _Love among
the Ruins_, we have almost the great moment itself. The lover, alone,
is musing on the beauties and the hidden wonder of the landscape before
him. Here, in this flat pastoral plain, lies buried all that remains of
"a city great and gay," the country's very capital, where a powerful
prince once held his court. There had been a "domed and daring palace,"
a wall with a hundred gates--its circuit made of marble, whereon twelve
men might stand abreast. Now all is pasture-land:

"And such glory and perfection, see, of grass
Never was"

--as here,

"Where a multitude of men breathed joy and woe
Long ago;
Lust of glory pricked their hearts up, dread of shame
Struck them tame;
And that glory and that shame alike, the gold
Bought and sold."

Of the glories nothing is left but a single little turret. It was part
of a tower once, a tower that "sprang sublime," whence the king and his
minions and his dames used to watch the "burning ring" of the
chariot-races. . . . This is twilight: the "quiet-coloured eve" smiles
as it leaves the "many-tinkling fleece"; all is tranquillity, the slopes
and rills melt into one grey . . . and he knows

"That a girl with eager eyes and yellow hair
Waits me there
In the turret whence the charioteers caught soul
For the goal,
When the king looked, where she looks now, breathless, dumb
Till I come."

That king looked out on every side at the splendid city, with its
temples and colonnades,

"All the causeys, bridges, aqueducts--and then
All the men!
When I do come, she will speak not, she will stand,
Either hand
On my shoulder, give her eyes the first embrace
Of my face,
Ere we rush, ere we extinguish sight and speech
Each on each."

A million fighters were sent forth every year from that city; and they
built their gods a brazen pillar high as the sky, yet still had a
thousand chariots in reserve--all gold, of course. . . .

"Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, b