And dost thou think
That I, in that worse waste, which was not strewn
Like thine with stones, but with the wreck of hopes
And wreck of love, was not sought out by fiends
As well as thou? Ay, ay, they came, the fiends;
They whispered in my ear that I was young,
And that my youth was passing unenjoyed;
They whispered in my ear that I was fair--
Fairer than any other far or near,
And that the beauty that a fool had spurned
Would wane before its time. They said: “Look up!
Thou mournest Love whom thou believest dead,
And Love, hard by, is waiting for one word,
One motion of encouragement, one glance.
Give but the signal, and the lonely one
Whom maid and matron scorn, and who now holds
Suspiciously aloof from life and joy,
Will be a very Empress new-enthroned,
And waste her life no more.” But oh, I clung
To the dull honour of my broken life;
I struggled with the Tempter long and hard;
I said unto myself that after all
Thou mightst at last return to me; and strove
With all my strength to keep me pure for thee.
But years went by and still thou didst not come,
And round and round my heart the Tempter prowled,
Nearer and ever nearer with new arts,
New wiles, new snares, new whispers, day by day,
And proved at last the stronger of the two.
I fled my father’s house for ever more;
I loved; was loved; I saw luxurious cities
Where pleasure triumphed--Alexandria,
Antioch and Athens, ay, and even Rome--
Courted where’er I went; until the day
When he proved false, and when once more I sat
Upon my lonely bed and prayed for dawn.
And yet I loved again; yea, twice and thrice.
Down, down the winding stair of love I went,
Until the slippery and precipitous steps
Became so dark and noisome all at once
That I threw up my arms and shrieked in fear;
But all my strength was gone, and heaven’s faint light
Too far above my head. Oh, since we two
Last saw each other’s eyes, not thou alone
Hast felt the scourge alight upon thy back,
Not thou alone hast known the howling waste;
For I have felt that nine times knotted scourge
Which makes the soul and not the body writhe.
Descending on me fiercely; and have found
In men’s embrace a loneliness more dread,
A desert more terrific and more bare
Than any which thy bruised unsandalled foot
Has ever trodden yet.