HERE alone by the logs in my chamber, Deserted, decrepit— Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot Of friends I once knew— My drama and hers begins weirdly Its dumb re-enactment, Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing In spectral review. —Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her— The pride of the lowland— Embowered in Tintinhull Valley By laurel and yew; And love lit my soul, notwithstanding My features’ ill favour, Too obvious beside her perfections Of line and of hue. But it pleased her to play on my passion, And whet me to pleadings That won from her mirthful negations And scornings undue. Then I fled her disdains and derisions To cities of pleasure, And made me the crony of idlers In every purlieu. Of those who lent ear to my story, A needy Adonis Gave hint how to grizzle her garden From roses to rue, Could his price but be paid for so purging My scorner of scornings: Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me Germed inly and grew. I clothed him in sumptuous apparel, Consigned to him coursers, Meet equipage, liveried attendants In full retinue. So dowered, with letters of credit He wayfared to England, And spied out the manor she goddessed, And handy thereto, Set to hire him a tenantless mansion As coign-stone of vantage For testing what gross adulation Of beauty could do. He laboured through mornings and evens, On new moons and sabbaths, By wiles to enmesh her attention In park, path, and pew; And having afar played upon her, Advanced his lines nearer, And boldly outleaping conventions, Bent briskly to woo. His gay godlike face, his rare seeming Anon worked to win her, And later, at noontides and night-tides They held rendezvous. His tarriance full spent, he departed And met me in Venice, And lines from her told that my jilter Was stooping to sue. Not long could be further concealment, She pled to him humbly: “By our love and our sin, O protect me; I fly unto you!” A mighty remorse overgat me, I heard her low anguish, And there in the gloom of the _calle_ My steel ran him through. A swift push engulphed his hot carrion Within the canal there— That still street of waters dividing The city in two. —I wandered awhile all unable To smother my torment, My brain racked by yells as from Tophet Of Satan’s whole crew. A month of unrest brought me hovering At home in her precincts, To whose hiding-hole local story Afforded a clue. Exposed, and expelled by her people, Afar off in London I found her alone, in a sombre And soul-stifling mew.