ON FALLING ILL THROUGH GRIEF
Truce to thee, Soul! I have a debt to pay,
Which I acknowledge and without thy pleading.
I like thee little that thou barrest my way
With prayers too late for one well past thy heeding,
Truce to these tears! Thy fellow lieth bleeding,
Wounded by thee; and thou, forsooth, dost say,
``I have a servant who is sick and needing
Care at men's hands.'' The care was thine to pay.
--When this same Soul was sick, a while ago,
The Body watched her, till his eyes grew dim
And his cheeks pale for very sympathy,

HE LAMENTS THAT HIS LOVE IS DEAD
My love is dead, dead and in spite of me,--
Dead while I lived,--while yet my blood was rife
With hope and pleasure and the pride of life.
For my love ended unexpectedly
During the Winter, stricken like a tree
By a night's cold, and frozen to the blood,
Whose leaves fell off and never were renewed
By any promise of the years to be.
And, when the Spring came, and the birds, to mate
Among its branches, lo! they found it bare,
Though all around was Summer in the wood.
Yet they took heart awhile, incredulous

JOY'S TREACHERY
I had a live joy once and pampered her,
For I had brought her from the ``golden East,''
To lie when nights were cold upon my breast
And sit beside me the long days and purr,
Until her whole soul should be lapped in fur,
Deep as her claws; a beautiful sleek beast,
Which I might love.--But, when I deemed it least,
Her topaz eyes were on my stomacher,
Athirst for blood. Thus, for I loathed her since
I learned her guile, one night I had her slain
And thrown upon a dunghill to the flies,
Who bred in her fair limbs a pestilence,

HE ARGUES WITH HIS LIFE
My life, what strange mad garments hast thou on,
Now that I see thee truly and am wise!
Thou wild, lost Proteus, strangling and undone!
What shapes are these, what metamorphoses
Of a god's soul in pain? I hear thy cries
And see thee writhe and take fantastic forms,
And strike in blindness at the destinies
And at thyself, and at thy brother worms.
Ah, foolish worm, thou canst not change thy lot,
And all like thee must perish 'neath the sun.
Why struggle with thy fellows? Nay, be kind,

COMPLAINING THAT HE HAD FALLEN AMONG THIEVES
Oh, Lytton, I have gambled with my soul,
And, like a spendthrift, pawned my heritage
To pitiless Jews, and paid a monstrous toll
To knaves and usurers,--and all to wage
Fair war with black--legs, men who dared to gauge
My youth's bright honour as an antique thing,
A broadsword to their fencing point and edge.
So the game went. And even yet I cling
To my mad humour, reckoning up each stake,
Each fair coin lost.--O miserable slaves,
Who for the sake of gold, the poorest thing

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,