''I Longed For Love--Love Pure Like Driven Snow'' Re-Revised
I longed for love—love pure like driven snow,
untouched and virgin—in the years to come:
but years did come and go until (O woe!)
it, like the fall, decayed in my autumn.
Heartbroken, never I a princess met
or maiden girl with whom to spend long nights
of ardent love. (Alas! best to forget
my heart's too foolish hopes of its delights.)
Unstained by sin, naïve and innocent;
unspoil'd by life and vice in the very least:
I cast'd aside my youth's prurient bent,
forswore my loins' lusts and was my own priest!
Now aged and useless, I've denied all love;
thus life's reproach abides and won't approve.
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