Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DO YOU BLAME HER?, by PHOEBE CARY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DO YOU BLAME HER?, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ne'er lover spake in tenderer words
Last Line: I should give him the self-same answer.
Subject(s): Love; Pain; Suffering; Misery


NE'ER lover spake in tenderer words,
While mine were calm, unbroken;
Though I suffered all the pain I gave
In the No, so firmly spoken.

I marvel what he would think of me,
Who called it a cruel sentence,
If he knew I had almost learned to-day
What it is to feel repentance.

For it seems like a strange perversity,
And blind beyond excusing,
To lose the thing we could have kept,
And after, mourn the losing.

And this, the prize I might have won,
Was worth a queen's obtaining;
And one, if far beyond my reach,
I had sighed, perchance, for gaining.

And I know -- ah! no one knows so well,
Though my heart is far from breaking --
'T was a loving heart, and an honest hand,
I might have had for the taking.

And yet, though never one beside
Has place in my thought above him,
I only like him when he is by,
'T is when he is gone I love him.

Sadly of absence poets sing,
And timid lovers fear it;
But an idol has been worshiped less
Sometimes when we came too near it.

And for him my fancy throws to-day
A thousand graces o 'er him;
For he seems a god when he stands afar
And I kneel in my thought before him.

But if he were here, and knelt to me
With a lover's fond persistence,
Would the halo brighten to my eyes
That crowns him now in the distance?

Could I change the words I have said, and say
Till one of us two shall perish,
Forsaking others, I take this man
Alone, to love and to cherish?

Alas! whatever beside to-day
I might dream like a fond romancer,
I know my heart so well that I know
I should give him the self-same answer.





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