That you were once unkind befriends me now,
And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,
Needs must I under my transgression bow,
Unless my nerves were brass or hammer’d steel.
For if you were by my unkindness shaken,
As I by yours, you’ve pass’d a hell of time;
And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken
To weigh how once I suffer’d in your crime.
O! that our night of woe might have remember’d
My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,
And soon to you, as you to me, then tender’d
The humble salve, which wounded bosoms fits!
But that your trespass now becomes a fee;
Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.
In plain English
You hurt me once, and that pain is actually helping me now — because I owe you the same suffering back. I can't escape this debt unless I were made of stone. If you felt as wounded by my cruelty as I felt by yours, you've endured real torment, and I've been a tyrant who never bothered to remember what that agony was like.
I wish our shared night of sorrow had taught me to feel deeply enough to turn around and comfort you with the same tenderness you needed from me then. But instead, we're stuck in a payment system: your old betrayal now buys my forgiveness, and my old betrayal buys yours. We're trading debts, trying to even the score.
