“Forgive past days—I can say no more— Maybe if we’d wedded you’d now repine! . . . But I treated you ill. I was punished. Farewell! —Truth shall I tell? Would the child were yours and mine! “As a wife I was true. But, such my unease That, could I insert a deed back in Time, I’d make her yours, to secure your care; And the scandal bear, And the penalty for the crime!” —When I had left, and the swinging trees Rang above me, as lauding her candid say, Another was I. Her words were enough: Came smooth, came rough, I felt I could live my day. Next night she died; and her obsequies In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned, Had her husband’s heed. His tendance spent, I often went And pondered by her mound. All that year and the next year whiled, And I still went thitherward in the gloam; But the Town forgot her and her nook, And her husband took Another Love to his home. And the rumour flew that the lame lone child Whom she wished for its safety child of mine, Was treated ill when offspring came Of the new-made dame, And marked a more vigorous line. [Picture: Sketch of cemetery] A smarter grief within me wrought Than even at loss of her so dear; Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused, Her child ill-used, I helpless to interfere! One eve as I stood at my spot of thought In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong, Her husband neared; and to shun his view By her hallowed mew I went from the tombs among To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced— That haggard mark of Imperial Rome, Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime Of our Christian time: It was void, and I inward clomb. Scarce night the sun’s gold touch displaced From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed, With lip upcast; Then, halting, sullenly said: “It is noised that you visit my first wife’s tomb. Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear While living, when dead. So I’ve claim to ask By what right you task My patience by vigiling there? “There’s decency even in death, I assume; Preserve it, sir, and keep away; For the mother of my first-born you Show mind undue! —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say.” A desperate stroke discerned I then— God pardon—or pardon not—the lie; She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine Of slights) ’twere mine, So I said: “But the father I. “That you thought it yours is the way of men; But I won her troth long ere your day: You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me? ’Twas in fealty. —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say,