If I have since done evil in my life, <br />I was not born for evil. This I know. <br />My soul was a thing pure from sensual strife. <br />No vice of the blood foredoomed me to this woe. <br />I did not love corruption. Beauty, truth, <br />Justice, compassion, peace with God and man, <br />These were my laws, the instincts of my youth, <br />And hold me still, conceal it as I can. <br />I did not love corruption, nor do love. <br />I find it ill to hate and ill to grieve. <br />Nature designed me for a life above <br />The mere discordant dreams in which I live. <br />If I now go a beggar on the Earth, <br />I was a saint of Heaven by right of birth.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/esther-a-sonnet-sequence-xxi/
