Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

THE WALK

   You did not walk with me   Of late to the hill-top tree      By the gated ways,      As in earlier days;      You were weak and lame,      So you never came,And I went alone, and I did not mind,Not thinking of you as left behind.   I walked up there to-day   Just in the former way:      Surveyed around      The familiar ground      By myself again:      What difference, then?Only that underlying senseOf the look of a room on returning thence.

RAIN ON A GRAVE

Clouds spout upon her   Their waters amain   In ruthless disdain, —Her who but lately   Had shivered with painAs at touch of dishonourIf there had lit on herSo coldly, so straightly   Such arrows of rain.She who to shelter   Her delicate headWould quicken and quicken   Each tentative treadIf drops chanced to pelt her   That summertime spills   In dust-paven rillsWhen thunder-clouds thicken   And birds close their bills.Would that I lay there   And she were housed here!Or better, togetherWere folded away thereExposed to one weatherWe both, – who would stray thereWhen sunny the day there,   Or evening was clear   At the prime of the year.Soon will be growing   Green blades from her mound,And daises be showing   Like stars on the ground,Till she form part of them —Ay – the sweet heart of them,Loved beyond measureWith a child’s pleasure   All her life’s round. Jan. 31, 1913.

“I FOUND HER OUT THERE”

I found her out thereOn a slope few see,That falls westwardlyTo the salt-edged air,Where the ocean breaksOn the purple strand,And the hurricane shakesThe solid land.I brought her here,And have laid her to restIn a noiseless nestNo sea beats near.She will never be stirredIn her loamy cellBy the waves long heardAnd loved so well.So she does not sleepBy those haunted heightsThe Atlantic smitesAnd the blind gales sweep,Whence she often would gazeAt Dundagel’s far head,While the dipping blazeDyed her face fire-red;And would sigh at the taleOf sunk Lyonnesse,As a wind-tugged tressFlapped her cheek like a flail;Or listen at whilesWith a thought-bound browTo the murmuring milesShe is far from now.Yet her shade, maybe,Will creep undergroundTill it catch the soundOf that western seaAs it swells and sobsWhere she once domiciled,And joy in its throbsWith the heart of a child.

WITHOUT CEREMONY

It was your way, my dear,To be gone without a wordWhen callers, friends, or kinHad left, and I hastened inTo rejoin you, as I inferred.And when you’d a mind to careerOff anywhere – say to town —You were all on a sudden goneBefore I had thought thereon,Or noticed your trunks were down.So, now that you disappearFor ever in that swift style,Your meaning seems to meJust as it used to be:“Good-bye is not worth while!”

LAMENT

How she would have lovedA party to-day! —Bright-hatted and gloved,With table and trayAnd chairs on the lawnHer smiles would have shoneWith welcomings.. ButShe is shut, she is shut   From friendship’s spell   In the jailing shell   Of her tiny cell.Or she would have reignedAt a dinner to-nightWith ardours unfeigned,And a generous delight;All in her abodeShe’d have freely bestowedOn her guests.. But alas,She is shut under grass   Where no cups flow,   Powerless to know   That it might be so.And she would have soughtWith a child’s eager glanceThe shy snowdrops broughtBy the new year’s advance,And peered in the rimeOf Candlemas-timeFor crocuses.. chancedIt that she were not tranced   From sights she loved best;   Wholly possessed   By an infinite rest!And we are here stayingAmid these stale thingsWho care not for gaying,And those junketingsThat used so to joy her,And never to cloy herAs us they cloy!.. ButShe is shut, she is shut   From the cheer of them, dead   To all done and said   In a yew-arched bed.

THE HAUNTER

He does not think that I haunt here nightly:   How shall I let him knowThat whither his fancy sets him wandering   I, too, alertly go? —Hover and hover a few feet from him   Just as I used to do,But cannot answer his words addressed me —   Only listen thereto!When I could answer he did not say them:   When I could let him knowHow I would like to join in his journeys   Seldom he wished to go.Now that he goes and wants me with him   More than he used to do,Never he sees my faithful phantom   Though he speaks thereto.Yes, I accompany him to places   Only dreamers know,Where the shy hares limp long paces,   Where the night rooks go;Into old aisles where the past is all to him,   Close as his shade can do,Always lacking the power to call to him,   Near as I reach thereto!What a good haunter I am, O tell him,   Quickly make him knowIf he but sigh since my loss befell him   Straight to his side I go.Tell him a faithful one is doing   All that love can doStill that his path may be worth pursuing,   And to bring peace thereto.

THE VOICE

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,Saying that now you are not as you wereWhen you had changed from the one who was all to me,But as at first, when our day was fair.Can it be you that I hear?  Let me view you, then,Standing as when I drew near to the townWhere you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,Even to the original air-blue gown!Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessnessTravelling across the wet mead to me here,You being ever consigned to existlessness,Heard no more again far or near?   Thus I; faltering forward,   Leaves around me falling,Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward   And the woman calling. December 1912.

HIS VISITOR

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weakerTo behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,And need no setting open of the long familiar door   As before.The change I notice in my once own quarters!A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be,The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered,And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea   As with me.I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants;They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong,But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here,Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song   Float along.So I don’t want to linger in this re-decked dwelling,I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold,And I make again for Mellstock to return here never,And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold   Souls of old.1913.

A CIRCULAR

As “legal representative”I read a missive not my own,On new designs the senders give   For clothes, in tints as shown.Here figure blouses, gowns for tea,And presentation-trains of state,Charming ball-dresses, millinery,   Warranted up to date.And this gay-pictured, spring-time shoutOf Fashion, hails what lady proud?Her who before last year was out   Was costumed in a shroud.

A DREAM OR NO

Why go to Saint-Juliot?  What’s Juliot to me?   I was but made fancy   By some necromancyThat much of my life claims the spot as its key.Yes.  I have had dreams of that place in the West,   And a maiden abiding   Thereat as in hiding;Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown-tressed.And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago,   There lonely I found her,   The sea-birds around her,And other than nigh things uncaring to know.So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed)   That quickly she drew me   To take her unto me,And lodge her long years with me.  Such have I dreamed.But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see;   Can she ever have been here,   And shed her life’s sheen here,The woman I thought a long housemate with me?Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist?   Or a Vallency Valley   With stream and leafed alley,Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist? February 1913.

AFTER A JOURNEY

Hereto I come to interview a ghost;   Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,   And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.Where you will next be there’s no knowing,   Facing round about me everywhere,      With your nut-coloured hair,And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;   Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;What have you now found to say of our past —   Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?   Things were not lastly as firstly well      With us twain, you tell?But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.I see what you are doing: you are leading me on   To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone   At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow   That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,      When you were all aglow,And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,   The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily,Soon you will have, Dear, to vanish from me,   For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,   The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!      I am just the same as whenOur days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.Pentargan Bay.

A DEATH-DAY RECALLED

Beeny did not quiver,   Juliot grew not gray,Thin Valency’s river   Held its wonted way.Bos seemed not to utter   Dimmest note of dirge,Targan mouth a mutter   To its creamy surge.Yet though these, unheeding,   Listless, passed the hourOf her spirit’s speeding,   She had, in her flower,Sought and loved the places —   Much and often pinedFor their lonely faces   When in towns confined.Why did not Valency   In his purl deploreOne whose haunts were whence he   Drew his limpid store?Why did Bos not thunder,   Targan apprehendBody and breath were sunder   Of their former friend?

BEENY CLIFF

March 1870 —March 1913

IO the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free —The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.IIThe pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far awayIn a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.IIIA little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.IV– Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?VWhat if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,The woman now is – elsewhere – whom the ambling pony bore,And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.

AT CASTLE BOTEREL

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,   And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,I look behind at the fading byway,   And see on its slope, now glistening wet,      Distinctly yetMyself and a girlish form benighted   In dry March weather.  We climb the roadBeside a chaise.  We had just alighted   To ease the sturdy pony’s load      When he sighed and slowed.What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of   Matters not much, nor to what it led, —Something that life will not be balked of   Without rude reason till hope is dead,      And feeling fled.It filled but a minute.  But was there ever   A time of such quality, since or before,In that hill’s story?  To one mind never,   Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,   By thousands more.Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,   And much have they faced there, first and last,Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;   But what they record in colour and cast      Is – that we two passed.And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,   In mindless rote, has ruled from sightThe substance now, one phantom figure   Remains on the slope, as when that night      Saw us alight.I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,   I look back at it amid the rainFor the very last time; for my sand is sinking,   And I shall traverse old love’s domain      Never again. March 1913.

PLACES

Nobody says: Ah, that is the placeWhere chanced, in the hollow of years ago,What none of the Three Towns cared to know —The birth of a little girl of grace —The sweetest the house saw, first or last;   Yet it was so   On that day long past.Nobody thinks: There, there she layIn a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,And listened, just after the bedtime hour,To the stammering chimes that used to playThe quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune   In Saint Andrew’s tower   Night, morn, and noon.Nobody calls to mind that hereUpon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid,With cheeks whose airy flush outbidFresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear,She cantered down, as if she must fall   (Though she never did),   To the charm of all.Nay: one there is to whom these things,That nobody else’s mind calls back,Have a savour that scenes in being lack,And a presence more than the actual brings;To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,   And its urgent clack   But a vapid tale.Plymouth, March 1913.

THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN

IQueer are the ways of a man I know:   He comes and stands   In a careworn craze,   And looks at the sands   And the seaward haze,   With moveless hands   And face and gaze,   Then turns to go.And what does he see when he gazes so?IIThey say he sees as an instant thing   More clear than to-day,   A sweet soft scene   That once was in play   By that briny green;   Yes, notes alway   Warm, real, and keen,   What his back years bring —A phantom of his own figuring.IIIOf this vision of his they might say more:   Not only there   Does he see this sight,   But everywhere   In his brain – day, night,   As if on the air   It were drawn rose bright —   Yea, far from that shoreDoes he carry this vision of heretofore:IVA ghost-girl-rider.  And though, toil-tried,   He withers daily,   Time touches her not,   But she still rides gaily   In his rapt thought   On that shagged and shaly   Atlantic spot,   And as when first eyedDraws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

MISCELLANEOUS PIECES

THE WISTFUL LADY

“Love, while you were away there came to me —   From whence I cannot tell —A plaintive lady pale and passionless,Who bent her eyes upon me critically,And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,   As if she knew me well.”“I saw no lady of that wistful sort   As I came riding home.Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrainBy memories sadder than she can support,Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,   To leave her roof and roam?”“Ah, but she knew me.  And before this time   I have seen her, lending earTo my light outdoor words, and pondering each,Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,As if she fain would close with me in speech,   And yet would not come near.“And once I saw her beckoning with her hand   As I came into sightAt an upper window.  And I at last went out;But when I reached where she had seemed to stand,And wandered up and down and searched about,   I found she had vanished quite.”Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,   With a small smile, when sheWas waning wan, that she would hover roundAnd show herself after her passing dayTo any newer Love I might have found,   But show her not to me.

THE WOMAN IN THE RYE

“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,When there are firesides near?” said I.“I told him I wished him dead,” said she.“Yea, cried it in my haste to oneWhom I had loved, whom I well loved still;And die he did.  And I hate the sun,And stand here lonely, aching, chill;“Stand waiting, waiting under skiesThat blow reproach, the while I seeThe rooks sheer off to where he liesWrapt in a peace withheld from me.”

THE CHEVAL-GLASS

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass   Filling up your narrow room?   You never preen or plume,Or look in a week at your full-length figure —   Picture of bachelor gloom!“Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,   Renting the valley farm,   Thoughtless of all heart-harm,I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,   A creature of nameless charm.“Thither there came a lover and won her,   Carried her off from my view.   O it was then I knewMisery of a cast undreamt of —   More than, indeed, my due!“Then far rumours of her ill-usage   Came, like a chilling breath   When a man languisheth;Followed by news that her mind lost balance,   And, in a space, of her death.“Soon sank her father; and next was the auction —   Everything to be sold:   Mid things new and oldStood this glass in her former chamber,   Long in her use, I was told.“Well, I awaited the sale and bought it.   There by my bed it stands,   And as the dawn expandsOften I see her pale-faced form there   Brushing her hair’s bright bands.“There, too, at pallid midnight moments   Quick she will come to my call,   Smile from the frame withalPonderingly, as she used to regard me   Passing her father’s wall.“So that it was for its revelations   I brought it oversea,   And drag it about with me.Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments   Where my grave is to be.”

THE RE-ENACTMENT

   Between the folding sea-downs,      In the gloom   Of a wailful wintry nightfall,      When the boomOf the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,   Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley      From the shore   To the chamber where I darkled,      Sunk and soreWith gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before   To salute me in the dwelling      That of late   I had hired to waste a while in —      Vague of date,Quaint, and remote – wherein I now expectant sate;   On the solitude, unsignalled,      Broke a man   Who, in air as if at home there,      Seemed to scanEvery fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.   A stranger’s and no lover’s      Eyes were these,   Eyes of a man who measures      What he seesBut vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.   Yea, his bearing was so absent      As he stood,   It bespoke a chord so plaintive      In his mood,That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.   “Ah – the supper is just ready,”      Then he said,   “And the years’-long binned Madeira      Flashes red!”(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)   “You will forgive my coming,      Lady fair?   I see you as at that time      Rising there,The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.   “Yet no.  How so?  You wear not      The same gown,   Your locks show woful difference,      Are not brown:What, is it not as when I hither came from town?   “And the place.. But you seem other —      Can it be?   What’s this that Time is doing      Unto me?You dwell here, unknown woman?.. Whereabouts, then, is she?   “And the house – things are much shifted. —      Put them where   They stood on this night’s fellow;      Shift her chair:Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”   I indulged him, verily nerve-strained      Being alone,   And I moved the things as bidden,      One by one,And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.   “Aha – now I can see her!      Stand aside:   Don’t thrust her from the table      Where, meek-eyed,She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.   “She serves me: now she rises,      Goes to play.   But you obstruct her, fill her      With dismay,And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”   And, as ’twere useless longer      To persist,   He sighed, and sought the entry      Ere I wist,And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.   That here some mighty passion      Once had burned,   Which still the walls enghosted,      I discerned,And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.   I sat depressed; till, later,      My Love came;   But something in the chamber      Dimmed our flame, —An emanation, making our due words fall tame,   As if the intenser drama      Shown me there   Of what the walls had witnessed      Filled the air,And left no room for later passion anywhere.   So came it that our fervours      Did quite fail   Of future consummation —      Being made quailBy the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,   Which I, as years passed, faintly      Learnt to trace, —   One of sad love, born full-winged      In that placeWhere the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.   And as that month of winter      Circles round,   And the evening of the date-day      Grows embrowned,I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.   There, often – lone, forsaken —      Queries breed   Within me; whether a phantom      Had my heedOn that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?

HER SECRET

That love’s dull smart distressed my heart   He shrewdly learnt to see,But that I was in love with a dead man   Never suspected he.He searched for the trace of a pictured face,   He watched each missive come,And a note that seemed like a love-line   Made him look frozen and glum.He dogged my feet to the city street,   He followed me to the sea,But not to the neighbouring churchyard   Did he dream of following me.

“SHE CHARGED ME”

She charged me with having said this and thatTo another woman long years before,In the very parlour where we sat, —Sat on a night when the endless pourOf rain on the roof and the road belowBent the spring of the spirit more and more.– So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bowOf her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,And her white forefinger lifted slow.Had she done it gently, or shown a traceThat not too curiously would she viewA folly passed ere her reign had place,A kiss might have ended it.  But I knewFrom the fall of each word, and the pause between,That the curtain would drop upon us twoEre long, in our play of slave and queen.

THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE

He paused on the sill of a door ajarThat screened a lively liquor-bar,For the name had reached him through the doorOf her he had married the week before.“We called her the Hack of the Parade;But she was discreet in the games she played;If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet,And gossips, after all, forget.“And he knows nothing of her past;I am glad the girl’s in luck at last;Such ones, though stale to native eyes,Newcomers snatch at as a prize.”“Yes, being a stranger he sees her blentOf all that’s fresh and innocent,Nor dreams how many a love-campaignShe had enjoyed before his reign!”That night there was the splash of a fallOver the slimy harbour-wall:They searched, and at the deepest placeFound him with crabs upon his face.

A CONVERSATION AT DAWN

He lay awake, with a harassed air,And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,   Seemed trouble-triedAs the dawn drew in on their faces there.The chamber looked far over the seaFrom a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,   And stepping a strideHe parted the window-drapery.Above the level horizon spreadThe sunrise, firing them foot to head   From its smouldering lair,And painting their pillows with dyes of red.“What strange disquiets have stirred you, dear,This dragging night, with starts in fear   Of me, as it were,Or of something evil hovering near?”“My husband, can I have fear of you?What should one fear from a man whom few,   Or none, had matchedIn that late long spell of delays undue!”He watched her eyes in the heaving sun:“Then what has kept, O reticent one,   Those lids unlatched —Anything promised I’ve not yet done?”“O it’s not a broken promise of yours(For what quite lightly your lip assures   The due time brings)That has troubled my sleep, and no waking cures!”.“I have shaped my will; ’tis at hand,” said he;“I subscribe it to-day, that no risk there be   In the hap of thingsOf my leaving you menaced by poverty.”“That a boon provision I’m safe to get,Signed, sealed by my lord as it were a debt,   I cannot doubt,Or ever this peering sun be set.”“But you flung my arms away from your side,And faced the wall.  No month-old bride   Ere the tour be outIn an air so loth can be justified?“Ah – had you a male friend once loved well,Upon whose suit disaster fell   And frustrance swift?Honest you are, and may care to tell.”She lay impassive, and nothing brokeThe stillness other than, stroke by stroke,   The lazy liftOf the tide below them; till she spoke:“I once had a friend – a Love, if you will —Whose wife forsook him, and sank until   She was made a thrallIn a prison-cell for a deed of ill.“He remained alone; and we met – to love,But barring legitimate joy thereof   Stood a doorless wall,Though we prized each other all else above.“And this was why, though I’d touched my prime,I put off suitors from time to time —   Yourself with the rest —Till friends, who approved you, called it crime,“And when misgivings weighed on meIn my lover’s absence, hurriedly,   And much distrest,I took you.. Ah, that such could be!.“Now, saw you when crossing from yonder shoreAt yesternoon, that the packet bore   On a white-wreathed bierA coffined body towards the fore?“Well, while you stood at the other end,The loungers talked, and I could but lend   A listening ear,For they named the dead.  ’Twas the wife of my friend.“He was there, but did not note me, veiled,Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed,   Now shone in his gaze;He knew not his hope of me just had failed!“They had brought her home: she was born in this isle;And he will return to his domicile,   And pass his daysAlone, and not as he dreamt erstwhile!”“ – So you’ve lost a sprucer spouse than I!”She held her peace, as if fain deny   She would indeedFor his pleasure’s sake, but could lip no lie.“One far less formal and plain and slow!”She let the laconic assertion go   As if of needShe held the conviction that it was so.“Regard me as his he always should,He had said, and wed me he vowed he would   In his prime or sereMost verily do, if ever he could.“And this fulfilment is now his aim,For a letter, addressed in my maiden name,   Has dogged me here,Reminding me faithfully of his claim.“And it started a hope like a lightning-streakThat I might go to him – say for a week —   And afford you rightTo put me away, and your vows unspeak.“To be sure you have said, as of dim intent,That marriage is a plain event   Of black and white,Without any ghost of sentiment,“And my heart has quailed. – But deny it trueThat you will never this lock undo!   No God intendsTo thwart the yearning He’s father to!”The husband hemmed, then blandly bowedIn the light of the angry morning cloud.   “So my idyll ends,And a drama opens!” he mused aloud;And his features froze.  “You may take it as trueThat I will never this lock undo   For so depravedA passion as that which kindles you.”Said she: “I am sorry you see it so;I had hoped you might have let me go,   And thus been savedThe pain of learning there’s more to know.”“More?  What may that be?  Gad, I thinkYou have told me enough to make me blink!   Yet if more remainThen own it to me.  I will not shrink!”“Well, it is this.  As we could not seeThat a legal marriage could ever be,   To end our painWe united ourselves informally;“And vowed at a chancel-altar nigh,With book and ring, a lifelong tie;   A contract vainTo the world, but real to Him on High.”“And you became as his wife?” – “I did.” —He stood as stiff as a caryatid,   And said, “Indeed!.No matter.  You’re mine, whatever you ye hid!”“But is it right!  When I only gaveMy hand to you in a sweat to save,   Through desperate need(As I thought), my fame, for I was not brave!”“To save your fame?  Your meaning is dim,For nobody knew of your altar-whim?”   “I mean – I fearedThere might be fruit of my tie with him;“And to cloak it by marriage I’m not the first,Though, maybe, morally most accurst   Through your unpeeredAnd strict uprightness.  That’s the worst!“While yesterday his worn contoursConvinced me that love like his endures,   And that my troth-plightHad been his, in fact, and not truly yours.”“So, my lady, you raise the veil by degrees.I own this last is enough to freeze   The warmest wight!Now hear the other side, if you please:“I did say once, though without intent,That marriage is a plain event   Of black and white,Whatever may be its sentiment.“I’ll act accordingly, none the lessThat you soiled the contract in time of stress,   Thereto inducedBy the feared results of your wantonness.“But the thing is over, and no one knows,And it’s nought to the future what you disclose.   That you’ll be loosedFor such an episode, don’t suppose!“No: I’ll not free you.  And if it appearThere was too good ground for your first fear   From your amorous tricks,I’ll father the child.  Yes, by God, my dear.“Even should you fly to his arms, I’ll damnOpinion, and fetch you; treat as sham   Your mutinous kicks,And whip you home.  That’s the sort I am!”She whitened. “Enough.. Since you disapproveI’ll yield in silence, and never move   Till my last pulse ticksA footstep from the domestic groove.”“Then swear it,” he said, “and your king uncrown.”He drew her forth in her long white gown,   And she knelt and swore.“Good.  Now you may go and again lie down“Since you’ve played these pranks and given no sign,You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine   With sighings sore,’Till I’ve starved your love for him; nailed you mine.“I’m a practical man, and want no tears;You’ve made a fool of me, it appears;   That you don’t againIs a lesson I’ll teach you in future years.”She answered not, but lay listlesslyWith her dark dry eyes on the coppery sea,   That now and thenFlung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.1910.