Classic Poem

Rather than let you know how near you were
To that last devastation of restraint
When you had stripped the plaster from the saint,
Threatened the idol with the idolater—
He damned himself and left you to infer
That he was victim of some tragic taint,
Toying with rouge and brilliantine and paint,
Hating himself to make you tenderer.

It was a trick fantastical enough,
Worthy an expert in aesthetic sham;
If he had only said, “The coarser stuff
Is in me and I am just what I am”—
You would at least have loved a man who had
The power of being magnificently bad.