Page:Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë, 1846).djvu/63

Rh I saw it sink, and strove to taste it,

My eager lips approached the brim;

The movement only seemed to waste it,

It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim.

These I have drankdrunk [sic], and they for ever

Have poisoned life and love for me;

A draught from Sodom's lake could never

More fiery, salt, and bitter, be.

Oh! Love was all a thin illusion;

Joy, but the desert's flying stream;

And, glancing back on long delusion,

My memory grasps a hollow dream.

Yet, whence that wondrous change of feeling,

I never knew, and cannot learn,

Nor why my lover's eye, congealing,

Grew cold, and clouded, proud, and stern.

Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting,

He careless left, and cool withdrew;

Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting,

Nor even one glance of comfort threw.

And neither word nor token sending,

Of kindness, since the parting day,

His course, for distant regions bending,

Went, self-contained and calm, away.