SEV. 
     O happy thou!  O easy remedy! 
     One poor faint sigh cures love’s infirmity! 
     Thy heart thy tool, o’er every passion queen,
     Beyond all change and chance thou sit’st serene! 
     In easy flow can pass thy love new-born
     From cold indifference to colder scorn;
     Such resolution is the equal mate
     Of god or monster, love, aversion, hate. 
     This fine-spun adamant Ithuriel’s spear
     Could never pierce:  for other stuff is here! 
     (Points to himself.)
     No faint ‘Alas!’ no swift-repented sigh
     Can heal the cureless wound from which I die. 
     Sure, reason finds that love his easy prey
     With Lethe aye at hand to point the way;
     With ordered fires like thine, I too could smother
     A heart in leash, find solace in another. 
     Too fair, too dear—­from whom the Fates me sever! 
     Thou hast no heart to give—­thou lov’dst me never!

     Paul. 
     Too plain, Severus, I my torture show,—­
     Tho’ flame leap up no more, the embers glow;
     Far other speech and voice, and mien were mine,
     Could I forget that once thou call’dst me thine! 
     Tho’ reason rules, yes, gains the mastery
     No queen benignant, but a tyrant she! 
     Oh, if I conquer—­if the strife I gain,
     Yet memory for aye is linked with pain! 
     I feel the charm that binds me still to thee;
     If duty great, yet great thy worth to me: 
     I see thee still the same, who waked the fire
     Which waked in me ineffable desire. 
     Begirt by crown of everlasting fame
     Thou art more glorious—­yet art still the same. 
     I know thy valour’s worth,—­well hast thou justified
     That bounding hope of mine, though fruitage was denied,
     Yet this same fate which did our union ban
     Hath made me, fated—­wed another man. 
     Let Duty still be queen!  Yea, let her break
     The heart she pierces, yet can never shake. 
     The virtue, once thy pride in days gone by
     Doth that same worth now merit blasphemy? 
     Bewail her bitter fruit—­but praised be
     The rights that triumph over thee and me!

     SEV. 
     Forgive, Pauline, forgive; ah! grief hath made me blind
     To all but grief’s excess, and fortune most unkind. 
     Forgive that I mistook—­nay, treated as a crime
     Thy constancy of soul, unequalled and sublime;
     In pity for my life forlorn, my peace denied,
     Ah! show thyself less fair,—­one least perfection hide! 
     Let some alloy be seen, some saving weakness left,
     Take pity on a heart of thee and Heaven bereft! 
     One faintest flaw reveal, to give my soul relief! 
     Else, how to bear the love that only mates with grief?