Is shifty as a huckster’s opening deal
     For bargain under smoothest market face,
     While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,
     Justice protests that Reason is her seat;
     Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,
     Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat;
     Until a sentient world is overtasked,
     And rouses Reason’s fountain-self:  she calls
     On Nature; Nature answers:  Share your guilt
     In common when contention cracks the walls
     Of the big house which not on me is built.

     The Lady said as much as breath will bear;
     To happier sisters inconceivable: 
     Contemptible to veterans of the fair,
     Who show for a convolving pearly shell,
     A treasure of the shore, their written book. 
     As much as woman’s breath will bear and live
     Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look,
     That held as if for grain the summing sieve. 
     Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes
     Our homely daylight after dread of spells. 
     Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes
     Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells
     About a story of the naked flesh,
     Intending but to put some garment on,
     Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,
     A traitor lurks and will be known anon. 
     Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,
     Stationed for index down an ancient track: 
     And ware of it was he while she poured out
     A broken moon on forest-waters black.

     Though past the stage where midway men are skilled
     To scan their senses wriggling under plough,
     When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,
     Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,
     Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,
     Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed
     Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,
     The valour of that rawness he could read. 
     Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran
     From senses up to thoughts, how she had read
     Maternally the warm remainder man
     Beneath his crust, and Nature’s pity shed,
     In shedding dearer than heart’s blood to light
     His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks. 
     Therewith he could espy Confession’s fright;
     Her need of him:  these flowers grow on stalks;
     They suck from soil, and have their urgencies
     Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves. 
     Veins of divergencies, convergencies,
     Our botanist in womankind perceives;
     And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize
     That splendid consummation and sure proof
     Of more than heart in her, who might despise,
     Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof
     To soar and be like Nature’s pity:  she
     Instinctive of what virtue in young days
     Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,