A man can shake a vampire off, but how To shake a wife off, when the children come, And you must leave your place, your livelihood To shake her off? And if you shake her off Where do you go? what do you do? and how? You see 'twas love that caught me, yet even so I had resisted love had I not seen A chance to rise through marriage. It was this: You know, of course, my wife was Elenor Fouche, Daughter of Arthur, thought to be so rich. And I had hopes to patch my fortunes up In this alliance, and become a lawyer. What happened? Why they helped me not at all. The children came, and I was chained to work, To clothe and feed a family--all the while My soul combusted with this aspiration, And my good nature went to ashes, dampened By secret tears which filtered through as lye. Then finally, when my wife's father died, After our marriage, twenty years or so, His fortune came to nothing, all she got Went to that little house we live in here-- It needs paint now, the porch has rotten boards-- And I was forced to see these children learn What public schools could teach, and even as I Left school half taught, and never went to college, So did these children, saving Elenor, Who saw two years of college--earned herself By teaching. I choke up, just wait a minute! What depths of calmness may a man come to As father, who can think of this and be Quiet about his heart? His heart will hurt, Move, as it were, as a worm does with its pain. And these days now, when trembling hands and head Foretell decline, or worse, and make me think As face to face with God, most earnestly, Most eager for the truth, I wonder much If I misjudged this daughter, canvass her Myself to see if I had power to do A better part by her. That is the way This daughter has got in my soul. At first She incubates in me as force unknown, A spirit strange yet kindred, in my life; And we are hostile and yet drawn together; But when we're drawn together see and feel These oppositions. Next she's in my life-- The second stage of the fever--as dislike, Repugnance, and I wish her out of sight, Out of my life. Then comes these ugly things, Like Alma Bell, and rumors from away Where she is teaching, and I put her out Of life and thought the more, and wonder why I fathered such a nature, whence it came. Well, then the fever goes and I am weak, Repentant it may be, delirious visions That haunted me in fever plague me yet, Even while I think them visions, nothing else. So I grow pitiful and blame myself For any part I had in her mistakes, Sorrows and struggles, and I curse myself That I was powerless to help her more-- Thus is she like a fever in my life.