| |
| “BUT why do you go?” said the lady, while both sate under the yew, | |
| And her eyes were alive in their depth, as the kraken beneath the sea-blue. | |
| |
| “Because I fear you,” he answered;—“because you are far too fair, | |
| And able to strangle my soul in a mesh of your gold-colored hair.” | |
| |
| “Oh, that,” she said, “is no reason! Such knots are quickly undone, | 5 |
| And too much beauty, I reckon, is nothing but too much sun.” | |
| |
| “Yet farewell so,” he answered;—“the sunstroke ’s fatal at times. | |
| I value your husband, Lord Walter, whose gallop rings still from the limes.” | |
| |
| “O, that,” she said, “is no reason. You smell a rose through a fence: | |
| If two should smell it, what matter? who grumbles, and where ’s the pretence?” | 10 |
| |
| “But I,” he replied, “have promised another, when love was free, | |
| To love her alone, alone, who alone and afar loves me.” | |
| |
| “Why, that,” she said. “is no reason. Love ’s always free, I am told. | |
| Will you vow to be safe from the headache on Tuesday, and think it will hold?” | |
| |
| “But you,” he replied, “have a daughter, a young little child, who was laid | 15 |
| In your lap to be pure; so I leave you: the angels would make me afraid.” | |
| |
| “O, that,” she said, “is no reason. The angels keep out of the way; | |
| And Dora, the child, observes nothing, although you should please me and stay.” | |
| |
| At which he rose up in his anger,—“Why, now, you no longer are fair! | |
| Why, now, you no longer are fatal, but ugly and hateful, I swear.” | 20 |
| |
| At which she laughed out in her scorn,—“These men! O, these men overnice, | |
| Who are shocked if a color not virtuous is frankly put on by a vice.” | |
| |
| Her eyes blazed upon him—“And you! You bring us your vices so near | |
| That we smell them! you think in our presence a thought ’t would defame us to hear! | |
| |
| “What reason had you, and what right,—I appeal to your soul from my life,— | 25 |
| To find me too fair as a woman? Why, sir, I am pure, and a wife. | |
| |
| “Is the day-star too fair up above you? It burns you not. Dare you imply | |
| I brushed you more close than the star does, when Walter had set me as high? | |
| |
| “If a man finds a woman too fair, he means simply adapted too much | |
| To uses unlawful and fatal. The praise!—shall I thank you for such? | 30 |
| |
| “Too fair?—not unless you misuse us! and surely if, once in a while, | |
| You attain to it, straightway you call us no longer too fair, but too vile. | |
| |
| “A moment,—I pray your attention!—I have a poor word in my head | |
| I must utter, though womanly custom would set it down better unsaid. | |
| |
| “You grew, sir, pale to impertinence, once when I showed you a ring. | 35 |
| You kissed my fan when I dropped it. No matter! I ’ve broken the thing. | |
| |
| “You did me the honor, perhaps, to be moved at my side now and then | |
| In the senses,—a vice, I have heard, which is common to beasts and some men. | |
| |
| “Love ’s a virtue for heroes!—as white as the snow on high hills, | |
| And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures, and fulfils. | 40 |
| |
| “I love my Walter profoundly,—you, Maude, though you faltered a week, | |
| For the sake of … what was it? an eyebrow? or, less still, a mole on a cheek? | |
| |
| “And since, when all ’s said, you ’re too noble to stoop to the frivolous cant | |
| About crimes irresistible, virtues that swindle, betray, and supplant, | |
| |
| “I determined to prove to yourself that, whate’er you might dream or avow | 45 |
| By illusion, you wanted precisely no more of me than you have now. | |
| |
| “There! Look me full in the face!—in the face. Understand, if you can, | |
| That the eyes of such women as I am are clean as the palm of a man. | |
| |
| “Drop his hand, you insult him. Avoid us for fear we should cost you a scar,— | |
| You take us for harlots, I tell you, and not for the women we are. | 50 |
| |
| “You wrong me: but then I consider … there ’s Walter! And so at the end, | |
| I vowed that he should not be mulcted, by me, in the hand of a friend. | |
| |
| “Have I hurt you indeed? We are quits then. Nay, friend of my Walter, be mine! | |
| Come, Dora, my darling, my angel, and help me to ask him to dine.” | |
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