We lived, we loved unwedded-- Love's sin and its shame that slays!-- No ill of the years we dreaded, No day of their coming days; Their coming days, their many Trials by noon and night-- And I know no land, not any Where the sun shines half so bright. Was he false to me, my Mother! Or I to him, my God!-- Who gave thee right, O brother! To take God's right and rod! God's rod of avenging morrows-- And the life here in my side!-- O Mother, sweet Mother of Sorrows, Would that I, too, had died! By the wall of the Chantry kneeling I pray, and the organ rings, "_Gloria! gloria!_" pealing, "_Sancta Maria!_" sings. They will find us dead to-morrow By the wall of their nunnery-- O Mother, thou Mother of Sorrow, His unborn babe and me. LOVE AS IT WAS IN THE TIME OF LOUIS XIV I Thrice on the lips and twice on the eyes I kiss you or ever I kiss your bosom.-- When love is young would you have it wise, Wise as the world goes?--No! 'tis a blossom Lovely and wise since it's lovely; content To live or to die as its folly pleases: Life is a rose and the rose's scent Is love, that grows as the rose increases. II If I tell you the Marquis will die, will you smile? And laugh when he's dead?--This powder, my lily, That seems but an innocent sweet in this phial-- Do not touch it! breathe distant!--a poison Exili Used a life to discover. Its formula left To a pupil (well worthy the master!), the prudent And pious Sainte Croix. Him, of teacher bereft, The Devil, I deem, must have taken as student. III Quite a dealer in death. And ours was a case That those difficult drugs of his laboratory Demanded. I visited; found him; his face, Bent over a sublimate,--safe from the hoary Light particles,--masked with a mask of fine glass. I told him your danger, Marie, and expounded Our passion, despair, with many an "Alas!" He smiled while a paste in a mortar he pounded. IV Three fistfuls of Louis!--"He'd do it," he said.-- A delicate dust, gum, liquid and metal Crushed, crucibled.... "Stay! tie this mask on your head. You see, but a grain on your rose's pink petal Has shriveled and blasted it--look, how it dries!-- A perilous pulver ... could Satan make better?... To mix with that present of perfumes--she dies, And who is the wiser? Or, say in a letter V