--Ed.
"Alas, sweetheart, the greatest of all the greatest woes has fallen upon
me! I thought to keep you, but I have lost you; I thought to see you for
a long time and to abide with you in sweet and honourable content, yet
now I embrace your dead body, and you passed away in sore displeasure
with me, with my heart and with my tongue. O most loyal and faithful of
women, I do confess myself the most disloyal, fickle and faithless of
all men. Gladly would I complain of the Duke in whose promise I trusted,
hoping thus to continue our happy life; but alas! I should have known
that none could keep our secret better than I kept it myself. The Duke
had more reason in telling his secret to his wife than I in telling mine
to him. I accuse none but myself of the greatest wickedness that was
ever done between lovers. I ought to have submitted to be cast into the
moat as he threatened to do with me; at least, sweetheart, you would
then have lived in widowhood and I have died a glorious death in
observing the law that true love enjoins. But through breaking it I am
now in life, and you, through perfectness of love, are dead; for your
pure, clear heart could not bear to know the wickedness of your lover.
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