The picture was of hand fast joined to hand, Both pushed from angry skies, their grasp more pledged Under the threatened flash of a bright brand At arm’s length up, for severing action edged. Why, then Love’s Court of Honour contemplate; And two drowned shorecasts, who, for the life esteemed Above their lost, invoke an advocate In Passion’s purity, thereby redeemed. Redeemed, uplifted, glimmering on a throne, The woman stricken by an arrow falls. His advocate she can be, not her own, If, Traitress to thy sex! one sister calls. Have we such scenes of drapery’s mournfulness On Beauty’s revelations, witched we plant, Over the fair shape humbled to confess, An angel’s buckler, with loud choiric chant. IV No knightly sword to serve, nor harp of bard, The lady’s hand in her physician’s knew. She had not hoped for them as her award, When zig-zag on the tongue electric flew Her charge of counter-motives, none impure: But muteness whipped her skin. She could have said, Her free confession was to work his cure, Show proofs for why she could not love or wed. Were they not shown? His muteness shook in thrall Her body on the verge of that black pit Sheer from the treacherous confessional, Demanding further, while perusing it. Slave is the open mouth beneath the closed. She sank; she snatched at colours; they were peel Of fruit past savour, in derision rosed. For the dark downward then her soul did reel. A press of hideous impulse urged to speak: A novel dread of man enchained her dumb. She felt the silence thicken, heard it shriek, Heard Life subsiding on the eternal hum: Welcome to women, when, between man’s laws And Nature’s thirsts, they, soul from body torn, Give suck at breast to a celestial cause, Named by the mouth infernal, and forsworn. Nathless her forehead twitched a sad content, To think the cure so manifest, so frail Her charm remaining. Was the curtain’s rent Too wide? he but a man of that herd male? She saw him as that herd of the forked head Butting the woman harrowed on her knees, Clothed only in life’s last devouring red. Confession at her fearful instant sees Judicial Silence write the devil fact In letters of the skeleton: at once, Swayed on the supplication of her act, The rabble reading, roaring to denounce, She joins. No longer colouring, with skips At tangles, picture that for eyes in tears Might swim the sequence, she addressed her lips To do the scaffold’s office at his ears.