Only a blunder-a sad mistake; <br />All my own fault and mine alone. <br />The saddest error a heart can make; <br />I was so young, or I would have known. <br /> <br /> <br />Only his rare, sweet, tender smile; <br />Only a lingering touch of his hand. <br />I think I was dreaming all the while, <br />The reason I did not understand. <br /> <br /> <br />Yet, somewhere, I've read men woo this way; <br />That eyes speak, sometimes, before the tongue. <br />And I was sure he would speak some day; <br />Pardon the folly-I was so young. <br /> <br /> <br />Was I, say-for now I am old! <br />So old, it seems like a hundred years <br />Since I felt my heart growing hard and cold <br />With a pain too bitter and deep for tears. <br /> <br /> <br />I saw him lean over the stranger's chair, <br />With a warm, new light in his beautiful eyes; <br />And I woke from my dreaming, then and there, <br />And went out of my self-made Paradise. <br /> <br /> <br />He never loved me-I know, I see! <br />Such sad, sad blunders as young hearts make. <br />She did not win him away from me, <br />For he was not mine. It was my mistake. <br /> <br /> <br />A woman should wait for a man to speak <br />Before she dreams of his love, I own; <br />But I was a girl-girls' hearts are weak; <br />And the pain, like the fault, is mine alone.<br /><br />Ella Wheeler Wilcox<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/only-a-sad-mistake/
