n anything had done amiss.
Until, one night, there came the kiss of Love, {202}
Disguised in friendly seeming like the rest--
Alas! he drove an arrow to her breast.

"'Then came the glow of passion--new to both--
The honeymoon of utter recklessness,
When the most righteous casts away his oath,
And all is lost in sweet forgetfulness,
And life is steeped in joy, without, within,
And rapture seems the sweeter for the sin.

"'Then came in its due course the sad awaking
To life and its grim claims, and all around
They found, in cold grim truth, without mistaking,
These claims for them did terribly abound;
And the poor priest was brought into despair
To find at every turn a foe was there.

"'To know our love is pure though passionate,
And have it judged as if both foul and base,
Doth seem to us the bitterness of fate;
Yet in the world it is the usual case.
By it all priests are judged--yea, every one--
Never as Jesus would Himself have done.

"'Because the noblest love with passion rings,
Therefore men cry 'tis _all_ mere sexual sense,
As if the rose and the dirt from which it springs
Were one because of the same elements:
Therefore 'tis true that, of all sins accurst,
Is Gossip, for it always tells the worst.

"'So Gossip did its worst for these poor souls.
The bishop made the priest appear before him,
And, as a power who destiny controls,
Informed him clearly he had hell before him,
And if he would preserve the priestly stole, {203a}
Must leave his woman--or else lose his soul!

"'Now had this man had money, or if he,
Like many of his calling, had been bold
With worldly air, then all this misery
Might have been 'scaped as one escapes the cold
By putting on a sheepskin, warm and fine;
But then hypocrisy was not his line.

"'His love was now a mother, and the truth
Woke in him such a deep and earnest love,
That he would not have left her though in sooth
He had been summoned by the Power above;
And so the interdict was soon applied,
But on that day both child and mother died.

"'She, poor weak thing, could not endure the strain,
So flickered out, and all within a day;
And then the priest, without apparent pain,
Began mysteriously to waste away,
And, shadow-like and silent as a mouse,
Men saw him steal into, or from, the house.

"'And thinner still an