And I've misplaced it. Frankly, from the first, Had no fixed purpose to deliver it. What principle makes me collaborator With such fantastic business? To resume: He acted like the boy he was. I smiled-- Against the flaming rage that burned his face-- My mocking smile, he thought, the Don Juan Upcurved my lips. I read his very thought Between words spoken; words that he suppressed: It was that I was glad that Claire was ill Because of that male mood when love of man Finds sustenance where suffering lays low The object of desire: If she suffers, The man subdues, devours her. She escapes If free of love. Oh yes, and this he thought: That I was glad she suffered, since my glory Had failed to hold her, failed to satisfy Her noble heart! God's wounds! Why Shelley thought She turned to him and with his spirit found A purity of peace and sweetest friendship, And faith that saves and serves, as men and women Are to each other souls to serve and save! Poor fool! I read it all, or pieced it out With words that I picked up from time to time.... There was this further thing: I am a man, So say they, who accepts the dying creed That woman's love is lawless and a toy When given if no priest has sanctified it-- Not quite, perhaps. The point is further on. In any case 'tis this: that this belief, Mine or part mine, and coloring my acts, Shadowed no whit the brow of Lady Claire. And that I, greatest lover of my time, Had won this lady's body but to lose The lady's soul, a soul that slipped and fled Out of the hands that clasped her flesh, because She knew me through her gift, thought less of me, And no wise felt herself bound to my life Because she gave her body. Kept her mind, Soul, free, untouched by that gift, by the gift Was cognizant of what is false and poor-- (I use some words I heard) in me. And thus I lost her soul, though earlier I had gained What seemed all to me, all I had the genius To comprehend in woman! Then comes Shelley And finds her soul, the genuine prize, and I Grow sullen with a consciousness of vision Inferior to his. All this they thought. Oh Jesus, what a lie!