An ideal bred in blissfully amoral naivety—

I saw beauty, and like Eve's, my hand flew

All failings blamed on a lack of humanly impossible charity

How much better when I could alone blame me; my entirety

How much easier when there were but two

An ideal bred in helplessly amoral naivety

Now, regressing—no, there has been enough absurdity

And too little desire for that which is true

All failings blamed on defiantly withdrawn charity

Above all, I no longer claim my own heart territory

None can be master of one's soul, and achieve joy too—

An ideal rediscovered, beyond naivety

Morbid adolescent romanticism cloaked in overwrought amity

Now viewed in time-dulled hue

All failings began then, in an utter lack of mutual charity

Too easy to relent; to accept less than what is possible in our unity

Too easy to accept a peaceful death beneath waters still and blue—

It was all an ideal—beheld, upheld, in naivety

It was a failing founded on everything but charity.