But my dream was over me still,—­I was half beguiled,
And he in his kindness left me seldom, O seldom, alone,
And yet love waxed cold, and I saw the face of my little child,
And then at the last I knew what I was, and what I had done.

’YOU will give me the name of wife.  YOU will give me a ring.’—­O
      peace! 
You are not let to ruin your life because I ruined mine;
You will go to your people at home.  There will be rest and release;
The bitter now will be sweet full soon—­ay, and denial divine.

But spare me the ending.  I did not wait to be quite cast away;
I left him asleep, and the bare sun rising shone red on my gown. 
There was dust in the lane, I remember; prints of feet in it lay,
And honeysuckle trailed in the path that led on to the down.

I was going nowhere—­I wandered up, then turned and dared to look back, Where low in the valley he careless and quiet—­quiet and careless slept. ‘Did I love him yet?’ I loved him.  Ay, my heart on the upland track Cried to him, sighed to him out by the wheat, as I walked, and I wept.

I knew of another alas, one that had been in my place,
Her little ones, she forsaken, were almost in need;
I went to her, and carried my babe, then all in my satins and lace
I sank at the step of her desolate door, a mourner indeed.

I cried, ‘’T is the way of the world, would I had never been born!’
’Ay, ’t is the way of the world, but have you no sense to see
For all the way of the world,’ she answers and laughs me to scorn,
‘The world is made the world that it is by fools like you, like me.’

Right hard upon me, hard on herself, and cold as the cold stone,
But she took me in; and while I lay sick I knew I was lost,
Lost with the man I loved, or lost without him, making my moan
Blighted and rent of the bitter frost, wrecked, tempest tossed, lost,
      lost!

How am I fallen:—­we that might make of the world what we would,
Some of us sink in deep waters.  Ah! ’you would raise me again?’
No true heart,—­you cannot, you cannot, and all in my soul that is good
Cries out against such a wrong.  Let be, your quest is for ever in vain.

For I feel with another heart, I think with another mind,
I have worsened life, I have wronged the world, I have lowered the light;
But as for him, his words and his ways were after his kind,
He did but spoil where he could, and waste where he might.

For he was let to do it; I let him and left his soul
To walk mid the ruins he made of home in remembrance of love’s despairs,
Despairs that harden the hearts of men and shadow their heads with dole,
And woman’s fault, though never on earth, may be healed,—­but what of
      theirs.

’T was fit you should hear it all—­What, tears? they comfort me; now you
      will go,
Nor wrong your life for the nought you call ‘a pair of beautiful eyes,’
’I will not say I love you.’ Truly I will not, no.
’Will, I pity you?’ Ay, but the pang will be short, you shall wake and be
      wise.