A Woman’s Sonnets: I

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.