So shortly everywhere I seemed to sense The feeling that they deemed me foul and base. While we were friends I made her known to artists, And writers in the city. With this start She had gone on and multiplied her friends Among this folk. I saw it all at once As one sees dawn from darkness. Then The social standard melted, gave away To all that had been written for some years. Free love had won at last. And we who kept Our love in hiding, she who lied to keep Her name as one who lived a maiden’s life, And I who doubted, hated her because She was not freshly mine, we, she and I, Stepped to a world all new, she to enjoy And I to perish. I was weak from loss Of blood from wounds she gave me, spent for love Poured for her sorrow, for she grieved and wept That I was not her early love, her love At love’s beginning. I went here and there To build her life up, make it rich, repair The injuries of her youth, retrieve the days Which had brought loneliness. Forbear with me-- I thought I could tell all in just a word-- Yes, this is it--She learned what was my strength And took it for her own, found out my faults And struck me there. She gave me confidence And trust, I fancied. On analysis She had concealed herself, there had not been Clear understanding with us. So she took My friends, and friends are never wholly friends, And made them hers, through these made other friends, Explored my havens, my alliances, My secret powers of prestige in the world. And I awoke to find the world my foe! And every desk of every editor Silent for knowledge of me, breaking silence In just a word of hate. You see she loosed This story like a mist which creeps through cracks That I had compromised her. Then behold I who had helped to bring this era in Of sex equality, yes, in spite of all, My ingrained feelings I have spoken of, Found myself robbed of her by just the creed I had upheld, and saw her live with him Who was her friend, before I knew her, yes, And justified by those whom she had feared, Because they hated me, and pitied him Bound to a woman in a loveless life Who would not free him, let him marry her.