His gay godlike face, his rare seeming
Anon worked to win her,
And later, at noontides and night-tides
They held rendezvous.
His tarriance full spent, he departed
And met me in Venice,
And lines from her told that my jilter
Was stooping to sue.
Not long could be further concealment,
She pled to him humbly:
“By our love and our sin, O protect me;
I fly unto you!”
A mighty remorse overgat me,
I heard her low anguish,
And there in the gloom of the calle
My steel ran him through.
A swift push engulphed his hot carrion
Within the canal there—
That still street of waters dividing
The city in two.
—I wandered awhile all unable
To smother my torment,
My brain racked by yells as from Tophet
Of Satan’s whole crew.
A month of unrest brought me hovering
At home in her precincts,
To whose hiding-hole local story
Afforded a clue.
Exposed, and expelled by her people,
Afar off in London
I found her alone, in a sombre
And soul-stifling mew.
Still burning to make reparation
I pleaded to wive her,
And father her child, and thus faintly
My mischief undo.
She yielded, and spells of calm weather
Succeeded the tempest;
And one sprung of him stood as scion
Of my bone and thew . . .