Last night I knelt low at my ladys feet.
One soft, caressing hand played with my hair,
And one I kissed and fondled. Kneeling there,
I deemed my meed of happiness complete.
She was so fair, so full of witching wiles
Of fascinating tricks of mouth and eye;
So womanly withal, but not too shy
And all my heaven was compassed by her smiles.
Her soft touch on my cheek and forehead sent,
Like little arrows, thrills of tenderness
Through all my frame. I trembled with excess
Of love, and sighed the sigh of great content.
When any mortal dares to so rejoice,
I think a jealous Heaven, bending low,
Reaches a stern hand forth and deals a blow.
Sweet through the dusk I heard my ladys voice.
My love! she sighed, my Carlos! Even now
I feel the perfumed zephyr of her breath
Bearing to me those words of living death,
And starting out the cold drops on my brow.
For I am Paul not Carlos! Who is he
That, in the supreme hour of loves delight,
Veiled by the shadows of the falling night,
She should breathe low his name, forgetting me?
I will not ask her! Twere a fruitless task,
For, woman-like, she would make me believe
Some well-told tale; and sigh, and seem to grieve,
And call me cruel. Nay, I will not ask.
But this man Carlos, whosoeer he be,
Has turned my cup of nectar into gall,
Since I know he has claimed some or all
Of these delights my lady grants to me.
He must have knelt and kissed her, in some sad
And tender twilight, when the day grew dim.
How else could I remind her so of him?
Why, reveries like these have made men mad!
He must have felt her soft hand on his brow.
If Heaven were shocked at such presumptuous wrongs,
And plunged him in the grave, where he belongs,
Still she remembers, though she loves me now.
And if he lives, and meet me to his cost,
Why, what avails it? I must hear and see
That curst name Carlos always haunting me
So has another Paradise been lost.
