d yield to-day
This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
Do not I recognize and honor truth
In seeming?--take your truth and for return,
Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
You loved me: I believed you. I replied
--How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'
--No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
Now were another's. My own right in me,
For well or ill, consigned away--my face
Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
As though--less hasty and more provident--
Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
Buried away forever. Take it now
Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
Those lines that make the College avenue!
I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
I had, that moment, seen into the heart
Of either, as I now am taught to see!
I do believe I should have straight assumed
My proper function, and sustained a soul,
Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
So had I missed the momentary thrill
Of finding me in presence of a god,
But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
'_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
You would have yielded up your soul to me
--Not to the false god who has burned its clay
In his own image. I had shed my love
Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
that drinks and then disperses. Both of us
Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
Then take love's last and best return! I think,
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
But, having run the circle, rests at home.
Why is your expiation yet to make?
Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
Now,--never wait the slow envelopment