VIII
Why did you play with such ungracious folly?
Because our passion is too bitter-sweet?
Because the acute and maddening melancholy
Is stronger than the rapture when we meet?
Because you weep beyond your own control
Like to one wounded bleeding inwardly?
Because you are not the mistress of your soul
Mighty enough to master fate and me?
It cuts me to the heart to see the brine
Not falling from your bad bewitching eyes,
To feel you are weeping in the central shrine
Whose woes the peristyle may not surprise.
I want to treat you as a lover rather;
You make me lecture to you like a father!
Because our passion is too bitter-sweet?
Because the acute and maddening melancholy
Is stronger than the rapture when we meet?
Because you weep beyond your own control
Like to one wounded bleeding inwardly?
Because you are not the mistress of your soul
Mighty enough to master fate and me?
It cuts me to the heart to see the brine
Not falling from your bad bewitching eyes,
To feel you are weeping in the central shrine
Whose woes the peristyle may not surprise.
I want to treat you as a lover rather;
You make me lecture to you like a father!
— 58 —
