And thought if love had been—had been quite love,
One little thing in each man’s life for bliss,
Then had the grief been paid with sweet enough
And a lost crown forgotten for a kiss;
While now, as though men played with fall and rise
Of mere base monies of the common mart,
To-day they strove for love as for a prize,
To-morrow compassed fame with every art;
And one who should but half trust any face
Of seeming fame, or follow love too well,
To set his heart a moment in love’s place—
That man should fall,—yea, even as he fell.
And he thought how, since the first fate began,
The lot of every one hath been so cast:
One woman bears and brings him up a man,
Another woman slays him at the last;
While all so hardly leaguered are men’s ways
And love so sharp a snare for them contrives,
The fleeting span of one fair woman’s days
Sufficeth many heroes’ loves and lives!
—But now, when he had thought all this and more,
He lay there and yet moved not from his place;
The love of her was in him like a sore,
And he lived waiting to behold her face.
At length they drew nigh to a land by name
Tænarus; and the third day, at its eve,
In guise of one who mourneth the Queen came
Weeping, and prayed him rise up and forgive.
V.
THE DAUGHTER OF HERODIAS.
MY heart is heavy for each goodly man
Whom crownéd woman or sweet courtezan
Hath slain or brought to greater shames than death.
But now, O Daughter of Herodias!
I weep for him, of whom the story saith,
Thou didst procure his bitter fate:—Alas,
He seems so fair!—May thy curse never pass!
Where art thou writhing? Herod’s palace-floor
Has fallen through: there shalt thou dance no more;
And Herod is a worm now. In thy place,
—Salome, Viper!—do thy coils yet keep
That woman’s flesh they bore with such a grace?
Have thine eyes still the love-lure hidden deep,
The ornament of tears, they could not weep?