- 1You who hear the sound, in scattered rhymes,
- 2of those sighs on which I fed my heart,
- 3in my first vagrant youthfulness,
- 4when I was partly other than I am,
- 5I hope to find pity, and forgiveness,
- 6for all the modes in which I talk and weep,
- 7between vain hope and vain sadness,
- 8in those who understand love through its trials.
- 9Yet I see clearly now I have become
- 10an old tale amongst all these people, so that
- 11it often makes me ashamed of myself;
- 12and shame is the fruit of my vanities,
- 13and remorse, and the clearest knowledge
- 14of how the world's delight is a brief dream.
