I could be gazing on this sight for hours.
O, Woman!—you are greatest in the world:
You have all fairest things; all joy is yours
To give and take away; you have all love;
Your beauty is to man’s heart as the sun
That doles out day and night to the whole earth;
You have strange gifts of passion and sweet words:
In truth you are right splendid,—and well fit,
I think, to be the leman of a god;
But all too fair, and yet not good enough,
To be the spouse and helpmate of one man.
—For this: there is a serpent in you hid;
It dwells in the invisible of thought,
Or crouches in some corner of your heart,
Or is engendered in the ardent flame
Of your quick passions,—where, it matters not;
But never doth it cease so to distil
Its wily poison into all you are
Or do or feel, it makes you turn and stab
Where most you thought to love,—it sets your lips
In league with falsehood to betray your heart,
Puts plotting in your heart against your lips.
You cannot will your heart to any man
But you must seek, for very wantonness—
As tempts the snake within you—just the straight
Betrayal of that man—his love, his faith,
As though you had not willed yourself at first:
And if you did not this somehow, your life
Would seem to you a nipped and withered thing,
Your beauty good for nought. You are made so.
—Therefore, my Love, I will not let you wake.
Nay—though you are so pure now and have sworn—
Lest you betray me as you did last time,
And times before that, having sworn as now.
But you are mine—my beautiful, my own!
And your lips said it while your heart beat here
Against mine—thrilling with a thought of me;
Your looks were almost piteous with a prayer
That I—that God would save you. Shall your mouth,
The chaste, the holy one that I have kissed
Be desecrate once more? Shall your own arms
Embrace and hug the very shame of you?
Shall this, your heart that made you mine, be false
—Go once more seeking out adulteries?
Not so: I strike the holy steel in it.
—It was the only way to keep her mine.
(1867.)
O WOMAN whose familiar face I hold
In my most sacred thought as in a shrine,
Who in my memories art become divine—
Dost thou remember now those years of old
When out of all thine own life thou didst mould
This life and breathe thy heart in this of mine,
Winning, for faith in that fair work of thine,
To rest and be in heaven?—Alas, behold!—
Another woman coming after thee
Hath had small pity,—with a wanton kiss
Hath quite consumed my heart and ruined this
The life that was thy work: O, Mother, see;
Thou hast lived all in vain, done all amiss;
Come down from heaven again, and die with me!