I am not sure, I own, that if first I had seen my delusion When I saw you, last night, I should be so ready to give you Now your promises back, and hold myself nothing above you, That it is mine to offer a freedom you never could ask for.
Yet, believe me, indeed, from no bitter heart I release you: You are as free of me now as though I had died in the battle, Or as I never had lived. Nay, if it is mine to forgive you, Go without share of the blame that could hardly be all upon your side.
Ghosts are not sensitive things; yet, after my death in the papers, Sometimes a harrowing doubt assailed this impalpable essence: Had I done so well to plead my cause at that moment, When your consent must be yielded less to the lover than soldier?
“Not so well,” I was answered by that ethereal conscience Ghosts have about them, “and not so nobly or wisely as might be.” — Truly, I loved you, then, as now I love you no longer. I was a prisoner then, and this doubt in the languor of sickness
Came; and it clung to my convalescence, and grew to the purpose, After my days of captivity ended, to seek you and solve it, And, if I haply had erred, to undo the wrong, and release you. Well, you have solved me the doubt. I dare to trust that you wept me,
Just a little, at first, when you heard of me dead in the battle? For we were plighted, you know, and even in this saintly humor, I would scarce like to believe that my loss had merely relieved you. Yet, I say, it was prudent and well not to wait for my coming
Back from the dead. If it may be I sometimes had cherished a fancy That I had won some right to the palm with the pang of the martyr,— Fondly intended, perhaps, some splendor of self-abnegation,— Doubtless all that was a folly which merciful chances have spared me.
No, I am far from complaining that Circumstance coolly has ordered Matters of tragic fate in such a commonplace fashion. How do I know, indeed, that the easiest is n't the best way? Friendly adieux end this note, and our little comedy with it.
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