How hard I strove against this jealousy!—
Would plead with Mary, and would kneel to Christ;
And seek the priestly father and confess
The feeling all to him. Nor would he chide
One half as much as I would chide myself.
How would he shame me that I dared to love
“A man who had not ask’d me for my love!
A man who loved my sister and not me!”—
Then bid me count my beads for hours and hours
A week or more I slept not, counting them;
But, while my thought was fixt but on my sin,
It seem’d my sin but grew. It grew in fact:
For on this voyage of life, not seas alone,
But skies—all things about us—mirror back
The souls that they surround. With each to him
That hath, is given back more of what he hath:
One smiles at aught, it gives him back a smile;
He frowns, it gives a frown; he looks with love,
He finds love; but without love, none can find it.
Alas, that men should think one secret fault
Can hide itself. Their sin will find them out.
Before, behind, from every quarter flash
Their moods reflected. Let them tell the tale,
Nay, let them whisper, glance, or shrug one hint
Of what they find in earth about, and lo!
In this, their tale of it, all read their own.