If, as I knew, they two did love each other,
  Because my own was darken’d?  Why was I
  To stand within the level of their hopes,
  Because my hope was widow’d, like the cur
  In the child’s adage?  Did I love Camilla? 
  Ye know that I did love her:  to this present
  My full-orb’d love hath waned not.  Did I love her,
  And could I look upon her tearful eyes? 
  Tears wept for me; for me—­weep at my grief? 
  What had she done to weep—­let my heart
  Break rather—­whom the gentlest airs of heaven
  Should kiss with an unwonted gentleness. 
  Her love did murder mine; what then? she deem’d
  I wore a brother’s mind:  she call’d me brother: 
  She told me all her love:  she shall not weep.

  The brightness of a burning thought awhile
  Battailing with the glooms of my dark will,
  Moonlike emerged, lit up unto itself,
  Upon the depths of an unfathom’d woe,
  Reflex of action, starting up at once,
  As men do from a vague and horrid dream,
  And throwing by all consciousness of self,
  In eager haste I shook him by the hand;
  Then flinging myself down upon my knees
  Even where the grass was warm where I had lain,
  I pray’d aloud to God that he would hold
  The hand of blessing over Lionel,
  And her whom he would make his wedded wife,
  Camilla!  May their days be golden days,
  And their long life a dream of linked love,
  From which may rude Death never startle them,
  But grow upon them like a glorious vision
  Of unconceived and awful happiness,
  Solemn but splendid, full of shapes and sounds,
  Swallowing its precedent in victory. 
  Let them so love that men and boys may say,
  Lo! how they love each other! till their love
  Shall ripen to a proverb unto all,
  Known when their faces are forgot in the land. 
  And as for me, Camilla, as for me,
  Think not thy tears will make my name grow green,—­
  The dew of tears is an unwholesome dew. 
  The course of Hope is dried,—­the life o’ the plant—­
  They will but sicken the sick plant more. 
  Deem then I love thee but as brothers do,
  So shalt thou love me still as sisters do;
  Or if thou dream’st aught farther, dream but how
  I could have loved thee, had there been none else
  To love as lovers, loved again by thee.

  Or this, or somewhat like to this, I spoke,
  When I did see her weep so ruefully;
  For sure my love should ne’er induce the front
  And mask of Hate, whom woful ailments
  Of unavailing tears and heart deep moans
  Feed and envenom, as the milky blood
  Of hateful herbs a subtle-fanged snake. 
  Shall Love pledge Hatred in her bitter draughts,
  And batten on his poisons?  Love forbid! 
  Love passeth not the threshold of cold Hate,
  And Hate is strange beneath the roof of Love. 
  O Love, if thou be’st Love, dry