Helen

By Mary Lamb

(Summer, 1800. Text of 1818)

High-born Helen, round your dwelling These twenty years I've paced in vain: Haughty beauty, thy lover's duty Hath been to glory in his pain.

High-born Helen, plainly telling Stories of thy cold disdain; I starve, I die, now you comply, And I no longer can complain.

These twenty years I've lived on tears. Dwelling for ever on a frown; On sighs I've fed, your scorn my bread; I perish now you kind are grown.

Can I, who loved my beloved But for the scorn "was in her eye," Can I be moved for my beloved, When she "returns me sigh for sigh?"

In stately pride, by my bed-side, High-born Helen's portrait's hung; Deaf to my praise, my mournful lays Are nightly to the portrait sung.

To that I weep, nor ever sleep, Complaining all night long to her-- Helen, grown old, no longer cold, Said, "you to all men I prefer."