"Pity, and smiles, and tears—which I had not;
And tenderness—but that I had for her;
Humility—and that I never had.
Her faults were mine—her virtues were her own—
I loved her, and destroy’d her!"

"

Look on me! There is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death;
Some perishing of pleasure, some of study,
Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness,
Some of disease, and some insanity,
And some of wither’d or of broken hearts;

For this last is a malady which slays
More than are number’d in the lists of Fate,
Taking all shapes, and bearing many names.
Look upon me! for even of all these things
Have I partaken; and of all these things,
One were enough; then wonder not that I
Am what I am, but that I ever was,
Or, having been, that I am still on this earth.

"

"The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action."

"In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,
Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn
About the lonely moated grange.
She only said, ‘The day is dreary,
He cometh not,’ she said;
She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,
I would that I were dead!’"

"It was at such moments that he was most attracted by her, when her charming, almost dainty little person was possessed by a gripping force, an ardent, uneasy, graceless love of human beauty. “I,” he thought, “am no beauty,” and he felt alone in his turn.

Mathieu got up and tiptoed out to see if the water was boiling, then returned and sat down again beside Ivich; he looked tenderly at that little sick, soiled body, still so fine in slumber; he realized that he loved Ivich, and was surprised. Love was not something to be felt, not a particular emotion, nor yet a particular shade of feeling, it was much more like a lowering curse on the horizon, a precursor of disaster."

"Goodbye, my friend, goodbye
My love, you are in my heart.
It was preordained we should part
And be reunited by and by.
Goodbye: no handshake to endure.
Let’s have no sadness—furrowed brow.
There’s nothing new in dying now
Though living is no newer."

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to mighty a stranger: I would not seem a part of it."

"My cold, hard heart exposed, finally, for what it truly was. Fair warning, I thought. I should have told you from the start. I will let you down."

"Study me then, you who shall lovers bee
At the next world, that is, at the next Spring:
For I am every dead thing,
In whom love wrought new Alchimie.
For his art did expresse
A quintessence even from nothingnesse,
From dull privations, and leane emptinesse:
He ruin’d mee, and I am re-begot
Of absence, darknesse, death; things which are not."

"Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that’s permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you."

"

SHE loves me…she loves me not.
I tear my hands, scatter the broken fingers…loves me not
As we scatter the random riddling heads of daisies
Tumbling through summer.

Though I adopt the smooth chin and greying hair,
The silver, tinkling out the change of years,
I hope, I know that age will never bring
The final shame of prudent commonsense.

It’s after one and you must be asleep.
The milky way is like a silver river.
I’m in no hurry. There’s no need
To wake you or disturb you with telegrams or thunder.

It’s what they call the end of the affair.
Love’s gondola has struck the rocks of fact.
We’re quits—no point in totting up
Our score of troubles, miseries, and wrongs.

See how much peace the world can give.
The sky is wrapped in stars, the gift of night.
At such a time you rise, and find you speak
To all the years, the future, and the world.

It’s after one and you must be asleep.
Or maybe you can feel the night as well.
I’m in no hurry. There’s no need
To wake you or disturb you with telegrams or thunder.

"