THAT love’s dull smart distressed my heart
He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
Never suspected he.
He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
He watched each missive come,
And a note that seemed like a love-line
Made him look frozen and glum.
He dogged my feet to the city street,
He followed me to the sea,
But not to the neighbouring churchyard
Did he dream of following me.
“SHE CHARGED ME”
SHE charged me with having said this and that
To another woman long years before,
In the very parlour where we sat,—
Sat on a night when the endless pour
Of rain on the roof and the road below
Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .
—So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow
Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,
And her white forefinger lifted slow.
Had she done it gently, or shown a trace
That not too curiously would she view
A folly passed ere her reign had place,
A kiss might have ended it. But I knew
From the fall of each word, and the pause between,
That the curtain would drop upon us two
Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.