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(From London Nights, 1895)
I LAST night I saw you decked to meet | |
| The coming of those most reluctant feet: | |
| The little bonnet that you wear | |
| When you would fain, for his sake, be more fair; | |
| The primrose ribbons that so grace | 5 |
| The perfect pallor of your face; | |
| The dark gown folded back about the throat, | |
| The folds of lacework that denote | |
| All that beneath them, just beneath them, lies: | |
| God, for his eyes. | 10 |
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| So the man came and took you; and we lay | |
| So near and yet so far away, | |
| You in his arms, awake for joy, and I | |
| Awake for very misery, | |
| Cursing a sleepless brain that would but scrawl | 15 |
| Your image on the aching wall, | |
| That would but pang me with the sense | |
| Of that most sweet accursed violence | |
| Of lovers’ hands that weary to caress | |
| (Those hands!) your unforbidden loveliness. | 20 |
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| And with the dawn that vision came again | |
| To an unrested and recurrent brain: | |
| To think your body, warm and white, | |
| Lay in his arms all night; | |
| That it was given him to surprise, | 25 |
| With those unhallowed eyes, | |
| The secrets of your beauty, hid from me, | |
| That I may never (may I never?) see: | |
| I who adore you, he who finds in you | |
| (Poor child!) a half-forgotten point of view. | 30 |
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II As I lay on the stranger’s bed, | |
| And clasped the stranger-woman I had hired, | |
| Desiring only memory dead | |
| Of all that I had once desired; | |
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| It was then that I wholly knew | 35 |
| How dearly I had loved you, my lost friend; | |
| While I am I, and you are you, | |
| How I must love you to the end. | |
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| For I lay in her arms awake, | |
| Awake and cursing the indifferent night, | 40 |
| That ebbed so slowly, for your sake, | |
| My heart’s desire, my soul’s delight; | |
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| For I lay in her arms awake, | |
| Awake in such a solitude of shame, | |
| That when I kissed her, for your sake, | 45 |
| My lips were sobbing on your name. | |
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