HE PROTESTS, NOTWITHSTANDING, HIS LOVE
To be cast forth from the fair light of heaven
Into the outer darkness and there lie,
Through unrecorded years of agony,
Unseen, unheard, unpitied, unforgiven;
To be forgotten of the earth and sky,
Forgotten of the womb that once did bear,
The eyes that cheered, the voice that comforted,
The very breast where love had laid his head;
To be alone with darkness and despair,
Alone with endless death, and not to die:
All these be punishments within the hand
Of an avenging deity to deal.

HE HAS FALLEN FROM THE HEIGHT OF HIS LOVE
Love, how ignobly hast thou met thy doom!
Ill--seasoned scaffolding by which, full--fraught
With passionate youth and mighty hopes, we clomb
To our heart's heaven, fearing, doubting, naught!
Oh love, thou wert too frail for such mad sport,
Too rotten at thy core, designed too high:
And we who trusted thee our death have bought,
And bleeding on the ground must surely die.
--I will not see her. What she now may be
I care not. For the dream within my brain
Is fairer, nobler, and more kind than she;

HE DARES NOT DIE
Four hours by the clock! How strange it is! Four hours
Since love and life, the future and the past,
Died with the shutting of these silent doors,
And thought became to me one purpose vast.
I have not moved from where she sat. The cast
Of her fingers on this cushion lightly scores
Its surface still; and still I hear the last
Tones of her laughter, and here lie her flowers.
Poor flowers! The ugliness of grief has wrought
Your change already. No besotted bloom
Of a false dawn has lured you to base life.

ON READING CERTAIN LETTERS
Reading these lines, this record of lost days
Where I am not, and yet where love has been,
This tale of passions consecrate to men
Other than me, unwitting of my ways,
I seem to hear some pagan chaunt of praise
Hymned to an idol shrine in gardens green,
Some wild soft worship of a god obscene,
Some idle homage to an idol face.
I shut my ears, yet hear it still. My eyes
See not, yet see the unchaste the unlawful fire;
I scent the odour of the sacrifice,
And feel the victim's shriek. Then in my ire

ON HER FORGIVENESS OF A WRONG
This is not virtue. To forgive were great
If love were in the issue and not gold.
But wrongs there are 'tis treason to forget,
And to forgive before the deed was cold
Was a strange jest. Ah, Manon, you have sold
The keys of heaven at a vulgar rate,
A sum of money for the wealth untold
Of a just anger and the right to hate.
--Well. It is done and the price paid. Now make
Haste to betray them as you me betrayed.
These are no longer foes to be forgiven.
Remember they are friends, that peace is made,

AS TO HIS CHOICE OF HER
If I had chosen thee, thou shouldst have been
A virgin proud, untamed, immaculate,
Chaste as the morning star, a saint, a queen,
Scarred by no wars, no violence of hate.
Thou shouldst have been of soul commensurate
With thy fair body, brave and virtuous
And kind and just; and, if of poor estate,
At least an honest woman for my house.
I would have had thee come of honoured blood
And honourable nurture. Thou shouldst bear
Sons to my pride and daughters to my heart,
And men should hold thee happy, wise, and good.

ON HER VANITY
What are these things thou lovest? Vanity.
To see men turn their heads when thou dost pass;
To be the signboard and the looking--glass
Where every idler there may glut his eye;
To hear men speak thy name mysteriously,
Wagging their heads. Is it for this, alas,
That thou hast made a placard of a face
On which the tears of love were hardly dry?
What are these things thou lovest? The applause
Of prostitutes at wit which is not thine;
The sympathy of shop--boys who would weep
Their shilling's worth of woe in any cause,

IN PRAISE OF HIS FATE
When I hear others speak of this and that
In our fools' lives which might have better gone,
Complaining idly of too niggard fate
And wishing still their senseless past undone,
I feel a childish tremor through me run,
Stronger than reason, lest by some far chance
Fate's ear to our sad plaints should yet be won
And these our lives be thrown back on our hands.
I tremble when I think of my past years,
My hopes, my aims, my wishes. All these days
I might have wandered far from Love and thee.

ON THE POWER OF HER BEAUTY
I am lighthearted now. An hour ago
There was a tempest in my heaven, a flame
Of sullen lightning under a bent brow
And a dull muttering which breathed no name.
Now all is changed. The very winds are tame,
And the birds sing aloud from every bough,
And my heart leaps. What empire dost thou claim,
Child, o'er this Earth, that nature serves thee so?
Sublime magician! Well may Earth and Heaven
Change at thy bidding, and the hearts of men.
Didst thou but know the power that beauty hath,

ON HER WAYWARDNESS
This is rank slavery. It better were
To till the thankless earth with sweat of brow,
Following dull oxen 'neath a goad of care
To a boor's grave agape behind the plough.
It better were to linger in some slow
Unnatural case, the sport of flood or fire,
To be undone by some inhuman vow
And robbed in youth of youth and its desire.
It better were to perish than thus live
Thy pensioner and bondsman, day by day
Doing fool's service thus for love of thee.
How shall I save thee if thou wilt not grieve