 | Studies in verse (1865) |  |
So she replied, and left him at his desk,
Returning to her bare and vacant room;
And still her eyes were steady in the street
To all who met her, and it bore her up,
Not to have wept before his hard grey eyes
And calculating forehead: still she thought,
‘My duty I have spoken, not my heart:
And I am braver than the thing I knew.’
So gained her dwelling, where the woman broke
Her self-command and sobbed upon her hands;
Accusing all her harshness of the day,
And wailing that she had not cast her length
On the bank's dusty floors, and knelt to him,
And wrung a pardon from the stern old man.
Returning to her bare and vacant room;
And still her eyes were steady in the street
To all who met her, and it bore her up,
Not to have wept before his hard grey eyes
And calculating forehead: still she thought,
‘My duty I have spoken, not my heart:
And I am braver than the thing I knew.’
So gained her dwelling, where the woman broke
Her self-command and sobbed upon her hands;
57
And wailing that she had not cast her length
On the bank's dusty floors, and knelt to him,
And wrung a pardon from the stern old man.
| Studies in verse (1865) | |