In that extremity of love, ’twill pass
For agony or rapture, seeing that love
Includes the whole of nature, rounding it
To love . . no more,—since more can never be
Than just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,
And drowning in the transport of the sight,
Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,
One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled,
She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware,
And drawing from his countenance to hers
A fainter red, as if she watched a flame
And stood in it a-glow. ‘How beautiful!’
Said she.
I answered, trying to be cold.
(Must sin have compensations, was my thought,
As if it were a holy thing like grief?
And is a woman to be fooled aside
From putting vice down, with that woman’s toy,
A baby?)——‘Ay! the child is well enough,’
I answered. ‘If his mother’s palms are clean,
They need be glad, of course, in clasping such:
But if not,—I would rather lay my hand,
Were I she,—on God’s brazen altar-bars
Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs,
Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.’
She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks,
As one who would not be afraid of fire;
And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,—
‘My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou,
