A CONTRADICTION
“Varium et mutabile semper Fœmina!”—Virgil
THEY say she’s like an April day,
All sun and shower, grave and gay,
Just half in love, and half in play,
Like other misses.
Go to! They tell a pack of lies;
For I have heard her heart-drawn sighs,
And I have seen her inmost eyes,
And felt her kisses!
They think her laugh is over-bold,
And hint her smiles are bought for gold;
Dull heretics have thought her cold,
Ah me! when we together stole
Across the weald to leafy Knole,
’Twas there she showed to me her soul
And all her passion!
They vow her life is tossed about
From ball to picnic, play to rout;
A careless butterfly, no doubt,
That scandal crushes.
What could we answer, if ’twere said
That Time and Fate two lovers led
To lily-streams at Maidenhead,
Among the rushes?
Her reputation shivered most
Last night at supper, when our host
Made her of careless lips the toast
And reigning goddess.
But I, who know my love, dare say
She thought of home, and tried to pray
Before her handmaid slipped away
Her satin bodice.
Your silly worldings all forget
Her depth of hidden life, and bet
They’ve never met her equal yet
In fact or fiction.
But I, who love in secret, sit
Unweaving webs that Fate has knit
To bind me to so exquisite
A contradiction.
Clement Scott.