But if some day the bitter knowledge swept
Down on my life,--bearing my treasured freight
To founder on the shoals of scorn,--what Fate
Smiling with awful irony had kept
Till life grew sweeter,--that my god was clay,
That 'neath thy strength a lurking weakness lay;
That thou, whom I had deemed a man of men
Faulty, as great men are, but with no taint
Of baseness,--with those faults that shew the saint
Of after days, perhaps,--wert even then
When first I loved thee but a spreading tree
Whose leaves shewed not its roots' deformity;
I should not weep, for there are wounds that lie
Too deep for tears,--and Death is but a friend
Who loves too dearly, and the parting end
Of Love's joy-day a paltry pain, a cry
To God, then peace,--beside the torturing grief
When honor dies, and trust, and soul's belief.
Travellers have told that in the Java isles
The upas-tree breathes its dread vapor out
Into the air; there needs no hand about
Its branches for the poison's deadly wiles
To work a strong man's hurt, for there is death
Envenomed, noisome, in his every breath.
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