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From “Semper Eadem”
HIS life was strangely hedged about | |
| By three, though he seemed not to know it: | |
| One whom he loved, who shut him out; | |
| One hid her passion in her doubt; | |
| One was too fond and wise to show it. | 5 |
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| The first blew on desire’s dark flame | |
| Until he tossed with every flicker | |
| In agonies of sad self-blame, | |
| That left him tired, but not yet tame | |
| Enough to cease love’s tireless bicker. | 10 |
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| The second tried in vain to bind him, | |
| Uncertain of what stirred in each. | |
| Walking through labyrinths to find him, | |
| She saw him shorn, but could not blind him; | |
| And silence was her wittiest speech. | 15 |
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| The third had known him since she bore him; | |
| And suffered, though she may have smiled, | |
| To know that barren wishes tore him, | |
| When one was ready to adore him | |
| As if he were not still her child. | 20 |
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| Too wise to hate the one he wanted, | |
| Too fond to pity her he scorned, | |
| Her hours, like his own, were haunted | |
| By devils that might well have daunted | |
| A monster likewise hoofed and horned. | 25 |
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| The first, meeting his mother, knew her | |
| A woman very like her own. | |
| The second wondered how to woo her, | |
| While ever seeking to eschew her, | |
| Fearful of what she must have known. | 30 |
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| And so their days were all one tangle | |
| Of this, one dropped, and that, one dared. | |
| While he, from his peculiar angle, | |
| Half-wished that loneliness might strangle | |
| What they so curiously shared. | 35 |
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