“I am leaving you . . . Farewell!” I said,
As I followed her on
By an alley bare boughs overspread;
“I soon must be gone!”
Even then the scale might have been turned
Against love by a feather,
—But crimson one cheek of hers burned
When we came in together.
FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER
A day is drawing to its fall
I had not dreamed to see;
The first of many to enthrall
My spirit, will it be?
Or is this eve the end of all
Such new delight for me?
I journey home: the pattern grows
Of moonshades on the way:
“Soon the first quarter, I suppose,”
Sky-glancing travellers say;
I realize that it, for those,
Has been a common day.
THE RIVAL
I determined to find out whose it was—
The portrait he looked at so, and sighed;
Bitterly have I rued my meanness
And wept for it since he died!
I searched his desk when he was away,
And there was the likeness—yes, my own!
Taken when I was the season’s fairest,
And time-lines all unknown.
I smiled at my image, and put it back,
And he went on cherishing it, until
I was chafed that he loved not the me then living,
But that past woman still.
Well, such was my jealousy at last,
I destroyed that face of the former me;
Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman
Would work so foolishly!