The Love Sonnets Of Proteus. Part III: Gods And False Gods: LXXII

FROM THE FRENCH OF ANVERS
My heart has its secret, my soul its mystery,
A love which is eternal begotten in a day.
The ill is long past healing. Why should I speak to--day?
For none have ears to hear, and, least of all, she.
Alas I shall have lived unseen tho' ever near,
For ever at her side, for ever too alone.
I shall have lived my life unknowing and unknown,
Asking naught, daring naught, receiving naught from her.
And she, whom Heaven made kind and chaste and fair,
Shall go undoubting on, the while upon her way
The murmur of my love shall fill the land,
Till, reading here perchance severe and unaware
These lines so full of her, she shall look up and say
``Who was this woman then?'' and shall not understand.