Page:Poems - volume 1 - EBBrowning (1844).pdf/271

 Of the calm which crushed my passion! I seemed swimming in a vapour,— And her gentleness did shame me, whom her scorn made desolate.

So, struck backward, and exhausted with that inward flow of passion Which had passed, in deadly rushing, into forms of abstract truth,— With a logic agonizing through unfit denunciation,— And with youth's own anguish turning grimly grey the hairs of youth,—

With the sense accursed and instant, that if even I spake wisely, I spake basely—using truth,—if what I spake, indeed I was true— To avenge wrong on a woman—her, who sate there weighing nioely A poor manhood's worth, found guilty of such deeds as I could do!—