And I said to my sight, 'No good thing shalt thou see,
For the noonday is turned to darkness in me.
In the house of Oblivion my bed I have made.'
And I said to the grave, 'Lo, my father!' and said
To the worm, 'Lo, my sister!' The dust to the dust,
And one end to the wicked shall be with the just!"
VII.
He ceased, as a wind that wails out on the night
And moans itself mute. Through the indistinct light
A voice clear, and tender, and pure with a tone
Of ineffable pity, replied to his own.
"And say you, and deem you, that I wreck'd your life?
Alas! Duc de Luvois, had I been your wife
By a fraud of the heart which could yield you alone
For the love in your nature a lie in my own,
Should I not, in deceiving, have injured you worse?
Yes, I then should have merited justly your curse,
For I then should have wrong'd you!"
"Wrong'd! ah, is it so?
You could never have loved me?"
"Duke!"
"Never? oh, no!"
(He broke into a fierce, angry laugh, as he said)
"Yet, lady, you knew that I loved you: you led
My love on to lay to its heart, hour by hour,
All the pale, cruel, beautiful, passionless power
Shut up in that cold face of yours! was this well?
But enough! not on you would I vent the wild hell
Which has grown in my heart. Oh, that man! first and last
He tramples in triumph my life! he has cast
His shadow 'twixt me and the sun .
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