The End

To Austin Ferrand.

I gave you more than love: many times more:
I gave mine honour into your fair keeping.
Thou lost mine honour: wherefore now restore
The love, I gave; not dead, but cold and sleeping.
Thou loveless, I dishonoured, go our ways:
Dead is the past: dead must be all my days.

Death and the shadows tarry not: fulfil
Your years with folly and love's imitation.
You had mine all: mine only now, to kill
All trembling memories of mine adoration.
That done, to lie me down, and die, and dream.
What once, I thought you were: what still, you seem.

1887.