If the past year were offered me again,
With choice of good and ill before me set.
Should I be wiser for the bliss and pain
And dare to choose that we had never met?
Could I find heart those happy hours to miss,
When love began unthought of and unspoke
That first strange day when by a sudden kiss
We knew each other's secret and awoke?
Ah, no! not even to escape the smart
Of that fell agony I underwent,
Flying from thee and my own traitor heart,
Till doubts and dreads and battlings overspent,
I knew at last that thou or love or fate
Had conquered and repentance was too late.