Cross child! red, and frowning so?
‘I, the day just over,
Gave a lock of hair to—no!
How dare you say, my lover?’
He asked you?—Let me understand;
Come, child, let me sound it!
‘Of course, he would have asked it, and—
And so—somehow—he—found it.
‘He told it out with great loud eyes—
Men have such little wit!
His sin I ever will chastise
Because I gave him it.
‘Shameless in me the gift, alas!
In him his open bliss:
But for the privilege he has
A thousand he shall miss!
‘His eyes, where once I dreadless laughed,
Call up a burning blot:
I hate him, for his shameful craft
That asked by asking not!’
Luckless boy! and all for hair
He never asked, you said?
‘Not just—but then he gazed—I swear
He gazed it from my head!
‘His silence on my cheek like breath
I felt in subtle way;
More sweet than aught another saith
Was what he did not say.
‘He’ll think me vanquished, for this lapse,
Who should be above him;
Perhaps he’ll think me light; perhaps—
Perhaps he’ll think I—love him!
‘Are his eyes conscious and elate,
I hate him that I blush;
Or are they innocent, still I hate—
They mean a thing’s to hush.
‘Before he nought amiss could do,
Now all things show amiss;
’Twas all my fault, I know that true,
But all my fault was his.