CUERVO - Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia

THE WORST OF IT
5
But what will God say? Oh, my sweet,
Think, and be sorry you did this thing I
Though earth were unworthy to feel your feet,
There's a Heaven above may deserve your love:
Should you forfeit Heaven for a snapt gold ring
And a promise broke, were it just or meet?
6
And I to have tempted you I I, who tried
Your soul, no doubt, till it sank! Unwise,
I loved and was Jowly, loved and aspired,
Loved, grieving or glad, till I made you mad,
And you meant to have hated and despised­
Whereas, you deceived me nor inquired I
7
She, ruined? How? No Heaven for her?
Crowns to give, and none for the brow
That looked like marble and smelt like myrrh?
Shall the robe be worn, and the palm-branch borne,
And she go graceless, she graced now
Beyond all saints, as themselves aver?
8
Hardly! That must be understood!
The earth is your place of penance, then;
And what will it prove? I desire your good,
But, plot as I may, I can find no way
How a blow should fall, such as falls on men,
Nor prove too much for your womanhood.
9
It will come, I suspect, at the end of life,
When you walk alone, and review the past;
And I, who so long shall have done with strife,
And journeyed my stage and earned my wage
And retired as was right,-I am called at last,
\Vben the devil stabs you, to lend the knife.
10
He stabs for the minute of trivial wrong,
Nor the other hours are able to save,
The happy, that lasted my whole life 101lg :
For a promise broke, not for first words spoke,
The true, the only, that turn my grave
To a blaze of joy and a crash of song.
©Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia
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