So--farewell.'
"My eyes were blind with passion as I read.
I tore the letter into bits and stamped
Upon them, ground my teeth and cursed the day
I met her, to be jilted. All that night
My thoughts ran riot. Round the room I strode
A raving madman--savage as a Sioux;
Then flung myself upon my couch in tears,
And wept in silence, and then stormed again.
'_Beggar!_'--it raised the serpent in my breast--
Mad pride--bat-blind. I seized her pictured face
And ground it under my heel. With impious hand
I caught the book--the precious gift she gave,
And would have burned it, but that still small voice
Spake in my heart and bade me spare the book.
"Then with this Gospel clutched in both my hands,
I swore a solemn oath that I would rise,
If God would spare me;--she should see me rise,
And learn what she had lost.--Yes, I would mount
Merely to be revenged. I would not cringe
Down like a spaniel underneath the lash,
But like a man would teach my proud Pauline
And her hard father to repent the day
They called me '_beggar_.' Thus I raved and stormed
That mad night out;--forgot at dawn of morn
This holy book, but fell to a huge tome
And read two hundred pages in a day.
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