ou in safe implacability
Hadst nought to dread--in thy own weakness shielded,
And in my love, which hath but too much yielded,
And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare;
And thus upon the world--trust in thy truth,
And the wild fame of my ungoverned youth--
On things that were not, and on things that are--
Even upon such a basis hast thou built
A monument, whose cement hath been guilt!
The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord,[94]
And hewed down, with an unsuspected sword,
Fame, peace, and hope--and all the better life
Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart,
Might still have risen from out the grave of strife,
And found a nobler duty than to part.
But of thy virtues didst thou make a vice,
Trafficking with them in a purpose cold,
For present anger, and for future gold--
And buying others' grief at any price.[95]
And thus once entered into crooked ways,
The early truth, which was thy proper praise,[96]
Did not still walk beside thee--but at times,
And with a breast unknowing its own crimes,
Deceit, averments incompatible,
Equivocations, and the thoughts which dwell
In Janus-spirits--the significant eye
Which learns to lie with silence--the pretext[97]
Of prudence, with advantages annexed--
The acquiescence in all things which tend,
No matter how, to the desired end--
All found a place in thy philosophy.
The means were worthy, and the end is won--
I would not do by thee as thou hast done!

_September, 1816._

[First published, _New Monthly Magazine_, August, 1832, vol. xxxv. pp.
142, 143.]

FOOTNOTES:

[35] {33}[Compare--

"Come, blessed barrier between day and day."

[36] [Compare--

"...the night's dismay
Saddened and stunned the coming day."

_The Pains of Sleep_, lines 33, 34, by S. T. Coleridge,
_Poetical Works_, 1893, p. 170.]

[37] {34}[Compare _Childe Harold_, Canto III. stanza vi. lines 1-4,
note, _Poetical Works_, 1899, ii. 219.]

[38] [Compare--

"With us acts are exempt from time, and we
Can crowd eternity into an hour."

_Cain_, act i. sc. 1]

[i] {35}

----_she was his sight,_
_For never did he turn his glance until_
_Her own had led by gazing on an object._--[