Poems (May)/Inconstancy
INCONSTANCY.
They told me he'd forsake me; that the words
With which he charmed my very soul away,
Were like the hollow music of a shell
That learns to mock the ocean's deeper voice.
For he had listened to love's tones until
His ear and lip, though not his heart, had grown
Familiar with their melody. Nay, more,
They said his very boyhood had been marked
By worse than a boy's follies, that in youth,
The season of high hopes, when lesser men
Put on their manhood as a monarch's heir
Rich robes and royalty, his poor ambition
Asked but new charms and pleasures, newer loves,
New lips to smile until their sweetness palled,
And softer hands to clasp his own, until
He wearied even of so light a fetter.
Thus did they pluck me from him, but in vain;
For when did warning stay a woman's heart?
I knew all this, and yet I trusted him.
Yea, with a child's blind faith I gave my fate
Into his hands, content that he should know
How absolute his power and my weakness.
Speak not of pride, I never felt its lash;
There is no place for fallen Lucifer
In the pure heaven of a sinless love;
And when he left me, as they said he would.
My spirit had no room for aught save grief:
Giving the lie to my own conscious heart,
I taxed stern truth with falsehood to the last.
But when to doubt was madness, when, perforce,
Even from my credulous eyes the scales had fallen,
What was the cold scorn of a thousand worlds
To the one thought that for a counterfeit
I'd staked my woman's all of love—and lost!
With which he charmed my very soul away,
Were like the hollow music of a shell
That learns to mock the ocean's deeper voice.
For he had listened to love's tones until
His ear and lip, though not his heart, had grown
Familiar with their melody. Nay, more,
They said his very boyhood had been marked
By worse than a boy's follies, that in youth,
The season of high hopes, when lesser men
Put on their manhood as a monarch's heir
Rich robes and royalty, his poor ambition
Asked but new charms and pleasures, newer loves,
New lips to smile until their sweetness palled,
And softer hands to clasp his own, until
He wearied even of so light a fetter.
Thus did they pluck me from him, but in vain;
For when did warning stay a woman's heart?
I knew all this, and yet I trusted him.
Yea, with a child's blind faith I gave my fate
Into his hands, content that he should know
How absolute his power and my weakness.
Speak not of pride, I never felt its lash;
There is no place for fallen Lucifer
In the pure heaven of a sinless love;
And when he left me, as they said he would.
My spirit had no room for aught save grief:
Giving the lie to my own conscious heart,
I taxed stern truth with falsehood to the last.
But when to doubt was madness, when, perforce,
Even from my credulous eyes the scales had fallen,
What was the cold scorn of a thousand worlds
To the one thought that for a counterfeit
I'd staked my woman's all of love—and lost!