Ah, I have given thee strange companions,
To thee--so slender and chaste and cool--
But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty
In all the mud of a miry pool
That holds the grace of its white reflection;
Nothing could fleck thee, nothing could stain,
Thou hast made a home for thy delicate beauty
Where all things peaceful and lovely reign.

Doubtless the night that my soul remembers
Was a sin to thee, and thine only one.
Thou thinkest of it, if thou thinkest ever,
As a crime committed, a deed ill done.
But for me, the broken, the desert-dweller,
Following Life through its underways,--
I know if those midnights thou hadst not granted
I had not lived through these after days.

And that had been well for me; all would say so,
What have I done since I parted from thee?
But things that are wasted, and full of ruin,
All unworthy, even of me.
Yet, it was to me that the gift was given,
No greater joy have the Gods above,--
That night of nights when my only lover,
Though all reluctant, granted me love.

For thy beauty was mine, and my spirit knows it,
Never, ah, never my heart forgets,
One thing fixed, in the torrent of changing,