I said, I know not what; but far too proud, Intoxicated though I was by love, To let her view the folly of my fall, I said not all I felt; but what I felt, Beneath the first fierce humbling of the storm, Floods o’er my memory yet with half the woe That overwhelm’d me then. Am I, I thought, So strong in love, and waiting long for it, And always true to it, to be outweigh’d By mere brute chaff of manhood, on the stage Or in the pit? I swore ’twas ever so With all her sex. Worth never weigh’d a straw. A very satyr could outwoo a sage.— Weak woman!—yet she must be weak—in brain Or body. Better to be weak in brain! She then, perchance, might serve a husband’s thought, And wisdom’s voice might rule the family! But were her moods too strong to serve his thought, She might serve that in him which could not think.— To wed she-brains, a man should seek to be Commended as a fool! XL. And then I stopp’d:— Here raved I, jealous of this fool alone, This coming clown.—To think of him I blush’d— But what of her?—of Edith?—She would live, With faintest smile, to fascinate—ah—crowds! The rabble would be ravish’d but, forsooth, To clap with crazy hands the rarer air Wherein she moved. For them, her voice would sound, With every trill so swaying all who heard That thronging cheers would thunder in response!— Her form, so sweet, would plead till foulest lives Would feel how pure were joys beyond their reach, And long for things their touch could never taint! My sweet, sweet love!— But, moving at her side, Should I be aught?—Alas, I could but seem— Beside the gilded glory of the stage, Beside the loud-mouthed suitors of the show, An unwhipt cur, to wait at some backdoor, And jar with signalling bark the echo sweet Of all-the-town’s applause. She mine would be But as the sun, whose flaming brow has touch’d The morning sea that flushes far and near, Is thine, O trembling globulet of spray, Because, forsooth, his image, glass’d in all The sea and world, is glass’d, as well, in thee!— Fool, fool! yet dear, dear folly! These my thoughts; My words—all I recall now—came at last When slowly sauntering back we reach’d her home. “Would God,” I sigh’d, “the time might come for us, When, looking toward the future now so lone, We two should need no more to say good-night.” “Good-bye,” she said, and left me in the gloom. XLI.