Canto LXII

Tho' if an eye that's downward cast    Could make thee somewhat blench or fail,    Then be my love an idle tale, And fading legend of the past;

And thou, as one that once declined,    When he was little more than boy,    On some unworthy heart with joy, But lives to wed an equal mind;

And breathes a novel world, the while    His other passion wholly dies,    Or in the light of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile.

-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto LXII