I think beauty is a bad bargain made of life.
Men’s iron sinews hew them room in the world
And use deceits to gain them trophies:
O, when our beauty fails us did we not use
Deceits, where were our room in the world—
Only our room in the world?
Are not the songs and devices of men
Moulds they have made after my scarlet mouth,
Of cunning words and contours of bronze
And viols and gathered air?
They without song have sung me
Boldly and shamelessly.
I am no wanton, no harlot;
I have been pleased and smiled my pleasure,
I am a wife with a woman’s natural ways.
Yet through the shadow of the pomegranates
Filters a poison day by day,
And to a malady turns
The blond, the ample music of my heart:
Inward to eat my heart
My thoughts are worms that suck my softness all away.
I watch the dumb eyeless hours
Drop their tears, then shapeless moaning drop.
Unfathomable is my mouth’s dream
Do not men say?
So secret are my far eyes,
Weaving for iron men profound subtleties.
Sorceress they name me;
And my eyes harden, and they say,
“How may those eyes know love
If God made her without a heart?
“Her tears, her moaning,
Her sad profound gaze,
The dishevelled lustres of her hair
Moon-storm like” they say,
“These are her subtleties” men say.
My husband sleeps,
The ghosts of my virgin days do not trouble him:
His sleep can be over-long,
For there is that in my embers
Pride and blushes of fire, the outraged blood,
His sleep makes me remember.
Sleep, hairy hunter; sleep!
You are not hungry more,
Having fed on my deliciousness;
Your sleep is not adultery to me,
For you were wed to a girl
And I am a woman.
My lonely days are not whips to my honour.
[_She dries her tears with her hair, then fingers the amulet at her
throat._]
Yours, friend.