Classic Poem

" So let it be,"
You say, and cease,
And sit there with seraphic mien,
Knowing the rage
You rouse in me
Is fraught with fate, Andre Revine!

Yet as the gulf
Between us grows,
Perfection lives upon your lips,
While mine are flames
That burn and tear
The ties that wedded us to strips.

And did we part,
The world would say,
" We know which of the twain was true
To tortured Love."
The world would say,
Andre Revine, that it was you.

For am I not
Unhappy born,
A magnet to all floating fates?
And is it not
Unhappiness
The world ever suspects and hates?

And are you not
A thing so bright
That shadow cannot on you fall?
A thing so glad
That guilt, if flung,
Would but upon me fix its pall?

You answer not,
But sad, serene,
And all-enduring sit and sigh.
And yet I see
That triumph springs
In you at my defeated cry.

" So let it be,"
Then say I too,
For this I hold the better part;
To let flame break
From anguished lips,
Than kindle it in any heart!