I spoke like an injured queen: It's our own defence when we're surprised-- The way our weakness is disguised; I said things that I could not mean, Or ought not--since it was a lie That love had not been in my mind: 'Twas in the air I breathed; the sky Shone love, and murmured it the wind. It had absorbed my soul with bliss; My blood ran love in every vein, And to have been beloved again Were heavenly!--so I thought till this Unlooked for answer to the prayer My heart was making with its might, Thus challenged, caught in sudden snare, Like two clouds meeting on a height, And, pausing first in short strange lull, Then bursting into awful storm, Opposing feelings multiform, Struggled in silence: and then full Of our blind woman-wrath, broke forth In stinging hail of sharp-edged ice, As freezing as the polar north, Yet maddening. O, the poor mean vice We women have been taught to call By virtue's name! the holy scorn We feel for lovers left love-lorn By our own coldness, or by the wall Of other love 'twixt them and us! The tempest past, I paused. He stood Silent,--and yet "Ungenerous!" Was hurled back, plainer than ere could His lips have said it, by his eyes Fire-flashing, and his pale, set face, Beautiful, and unmarred by trace Of aught save pain and pained surprise. --I quailed at last before that gaze, And even faintly owned my wrong: I said I "spoke in such amaze I could not choose words that belong To such occasions." Here he smiled, To cover one low, quick-drawn sigh: "June eves disturb us differently," He said, at length; "and I, beguiled By something in the air, did do My Lady Maud unmeant offence; And, what is stranger far, she too, Under the baleful influence of this fair heaven"--he raised his eyes, And gestured proudly toward the stars-- "Has done me wrong. Wrong, lady, mars God's purpose, written on these skies, Painted and uttered in this scene: Acknowledged in each secret heart; We both are wrong, you say; 'twould mean That we too should be wide apart-- And so, adieu!"--with this he went. I sat down whitening in the moon, With heat as of a desert noon, Sending its fever vehement Across my brow, and through my frame-- The fever of a wild regret-- A vain regret without a name, In which both love and loathing met.