Christabel

Alas! They had been friends in Youth;

But whispering tongues can poison truth;

And constancy lives in realms above;

And life is thorny; and youth is vain;

And to be wroth with one we love,

Doth work like madness in the brain;

***

But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining—

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs, which had been rent asunder;

A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.