Unrequited

What melancholy this, a wretched exclamation,
furtive yet feverish, of what must be love.

For love alone could account for such abasement,
or be explanation enough
for quivering hands and timorous words
that nonetheless beseech and dare to reach
where touch and speech are forever unheard.

Love too potent a drug to resist,
she remains faithful, pleading when she should desist,
kneeling before an unseeing, indifferent beloved.

What glorious suffering, what a torturous sight this:
the plain Jane would-be suitor spurned
for a comelier shape, a healthier accounting of riches
and still entreating when she could retreat, dignity intact.

Who could account for such steadfast devotion,
conceive of such a notion more monstrously cruel
than love unrequited, unacknowledged or deliberately slighted,
fed on futile hopes, nourished on the sheer force of feeling? 

“Stand,” I say to that young girl,
whose unavoidable heartbreak I suffered,
“and set your foolish heart aside. 
It leads you astray in vain, loving as it does without regard. 
The object of your affections does not return them.” 

I see myself in her, my beautiful daughter,
cobalt eyes bright with illusions,
and know that my warnings have no meaning;
they never do for the young in love. 

I have made the same mistake
but I cannot make the mistake for her.