Who’s this? For now the rabble have passed through, Going unnoticed out; Mother Superior Secretly with one finger at her lips, Re-enters, carefully locks my bedroom door, Now she disrobes with fingers trembling so They tear the fastenings—naked she steps out To practise with her long-past-bearing body The wiles of the Earthbound (Ah, the fine young man, The hot young man whose kisses tasted sweet To our new postulant!) Madam, I beg you! You have mistaken the room; no, next door sleeps A lusty bagman, he’s the man to embrace you And welcome you with every brisk refinement Of passion. But while _you_ rumple his sheets, The innocent and unhappy eyes of Rachel Bewilder me—Oh then in spite of Faith I am cast down—You nuns, but if I needed, As I no longer need, I’d challenge you To contest of hard praying, one against all. I could wrest Rachel back even to this bed To-night. But Faith, and Prayer that’s born of Faith Find her slow mind impediment to their power, So I resign her—Agatha, do your worst. The wisest course of Love? Yes, maidenhead. For me? Love’s Sacrifice? It was not love. The Broken Heart? Not mine. I’ll say no more Than mere _goodbye_. Go, get you to your nunnery, And out the candle! Darkness absolute Surrounds me, sleepy mother of good children Who drowse and drowse and cry not for the sun, Content and wisest of their generation. EPILOGUE. The morning star, over the mountains peering, Spoke to him not too distant for his hearing:— _I am the star of morning poised between_ _The dead night and the coming of the sun,_ _Yet neither relic of the dark nor pointing_ _The angry day to come. My virtue is_ _My own, a mild light, a relief a pity_ _And the remembering ancient tribe of birds_ _Sing blithest at my showing; only Man_ _Sleeps on and stirs rebellious in his sleep._ _Lucifer, Lucifer am I, millstone-crushed_ _Between conflicting powers of doubleness,_ _By envious Night lost in her myriad more_ _Counterfeit glints, in day-time quite overwhelmed_ _By tyrant blazing of the warrior sun._ _Yet some, my prophets who at midnight held me_ _Fixedly framed in their observant glass,_ _By daylight also, sinking well shafts deep_ _For water and for coolness of pure thought_ _Gaze up and far above them see me shining_ _Me, single natured, without gender, one_ _The only spark of Godhead unresolved._