Men might argue that having known thee
I had grown faithful and pure as thee,
Had turned at the touch of thy grace and glory
From the average pathways trodden by me.
Hadst thou been kinder or I been stronger
It may be even these things had been—
But one thing is clear to my soul for ever,
I owe my owning of thee to sin.
Had I been colder I had not reached thee,
Besmirched the ermine, beflecked the snow—
It was only sheer and desperate passion
That won thy beauty in years ago.
And not for the highest virtues in Heaven,
The utmost grace that the soul can name,
Would I resign what the sin has brought me,
Which I hold glory, and thou—thy shame.
I talk of sin in the usual fashion,
But God knows what is a sin to me—
We love more fiercely or love more faintly—
But I doubt if it matters how these things be.
The best and the worst of us all sink under—
What I held passion and thou held'st lust—
What name will it find in a few more seasons,
When we both dissolve in an equal dust?
If a God there be, and a God seems needed
To make the beauty of things like thee,
He doubtless also, some careless moment,
Mixed the forces that fashioned me.
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