 | Lays of France |  |
Woman, said he,
Why have you been so false with me?
Was it the waste thought of a day
I gave to you?—was it to win
A wanton hour, I cast away
My untried heavens and slew straightway
My greater unknown self within?
Was it to shrivel, with the sin
Of mere rich revelling to dull
My fallen soul once beautiful
Because of love, sharing the hell
Of harlots, that I chose to sell
Usurious fate so much of vast,
Yea boundless, that lay known between
Me and God only? So, at last,
Not half way into doom, I find
This fails me,—this that should have been
All heaven, this love that was to blind
So richly, I should ne'er have seen
The depth I dwelt in nor the height
I forfeited; now, all behind,
At once I see as many kings
As golden seeming days, with light
And lustre fading on them; bright
Imperial crowns and goodly things
Fall from them hastily; they sit
Dishonoured spectres of me, bare
In the bare past, abhorring it.
If I could go back and repair
One hour, one moment, to make fair
Eternity,—O I should seem
Not quite denuded of some dream
To keep my soul unshamed before
The fiends and angels: but, indeed,
I am too distant from that shore
Of life already; and no seed
Is left for sowing any more.
Henceforth, a weed among much weed
Of foundered love and life, my soul
Shall drift upon dark waves and waste
Upon the ceaseless seas that roll
Through the lone Infinite.
Why have you been so false with me?
Was it the waste thought of a day
I gave to you?—was it to win
A wanton hour, I cast away
My untried heavens and slew straightway
My greater unknown self within?
Was it to shrivel, with the sin
Of mere rich revelling to dull
My fallen soul once beautiful
Because of love, sharing the hell
Of harlots, that I chose to sell
Usurious fate so much of vast,
Yea boundless, that lay known between
Me and God only? So, at last,
Not half way into doom, I find
122
All heaven, this love that was to blind
So richly, I should ne'er have seen
The depth I dwelt in nor the height
I forfeited; now, all behind,
At once I see as many kings
As golden seeming days, with light
And lustre fading on them; bright
Imperial crowns and goodly things
Fall from them hastily; they sit
Dishonoured spectres of me, bare
In the bare past, abhorring it.
If I could go back and repair
One hour, one moment, to make fair
Eternity,—O I should seem
Not quite denuded of some dream
To keep my soul unshamed before
The fiends and angels: but, indeed,
I am too distant from that shore
Of life already; and no seed
Is left for sowing any more.
Henceforth, a weed among much weed
Of foundered love and life, my soul
123
Upon the ceaseless seas that roll
Through the lone Infinite.
| Lays of France | |