V

     A message from her set his brain aflame. 
     A world of household matters filled her mind,
     Wherein he saw hypocrisy designed: 
     She treated him as something that is tame,
     And but at other provocation bites. 
     Familiar was her shoulder in the glass,
     Through that dark rain:  yet it may come to pass
     That a changed eye finds such familiar sights
     More keenly tempting than new loveliness. 
     The ‘What has been’ a moment seemed his own: 
     The splendours, mysteries, dearer because known,
     Nor less divine:  Love’s inmost sacredness
     Called to him, ’Come!’—­In his restraining start,
     Eyes nurtured to be looked at scarce could see
     A wave of the great waves of Destiny
     Convulsed at a checked impulse of the heart.

     VI

     It chanced his lips did meet her forehead cool. 
     She had no blush, but slanted down her eye. 
     Shamed nature, then, confesses love can die: 
     And most she punishes the tender fool
     Who will believe what honours her the most! 
     Dead! is it dead?  She has a pulse, and flow
     Of tears, the price of blood-drops, as I know,
     For whom the midnight sobs around Love’s ghost,
     Since then I heard her, and so will sob on. 
     The love is here; it has but changed its aim. 
     O bitter barren woman! what’s the name? 
     The name, the name, the new name thou hast won? 
     Behold me striking the world’s coward stroke! 
     That will I not do, though the sting is dire.
     — Beneath the surface this, while by the fire
     They sat, she laughing at a quiet joke.

     VII

She issues radiant from her dressing-room, Like one prepared to scale an upper sphere:  — By stirring up a lower, much I fear!  How deftly that oiled barber lays his bloom!  That long-shanked dapper Cupid with frisked curls Can make known women torturingly fair; The gold-eyed serpent dwelling in rich hair Awakes beneath his magic whisks and twirls.  His art can take the eyes from out my head, Until I see with eyes of other men; While deeper knowledge crouches in its den, And sends a spark up:- is it true we are wed?  Yea! filthiness of body is most vile, But faithlessness of heart I do hold worse.  The former, it were not so great a curse To read on the steel-mirror of her smile.

     VIII

     Yet it was plain she struggled, and that salt
     Of righteous feeling made her pitiful. 
     Poor twisting worm, so queenly beautiful! 
     Where came the cleft between us? whose the fault? 
     My tears are on thee, that have rarely dropped
     As balm for any bitter wound of mine: 
     My breast will open for thee at a sign! 
     But, no:  we are two reed-pipes, coarsely stopped: 
     The God once filled them with his mellow breath;