What does it mean when the one forgiven Shivers and weeps and clings and kisses The credulous fool that holds her, and tells him A thousand things of a good man's mercy, And then slips off with a laugh and plunges Back to the sin she has quit for a season, To tell him that hell and the world are better For her than a prophet's heaven? Believe me, The love that dies ere its flames are wasted In search of an alien soul is better, Better by far than the lonely passion That burns back into the heart that feeds it.
For I loved her still, and the more she mocked me, --Fooled with her endless pleading promise Of future faith, -- the more I believed her The penitent thing she seemed; and the stronger Her choking arms and her small hot kisses Bound me and burned my brain to pity, The more she grew to the heavenly creature That brightened the life I had lost forever.
The truth was gone somehow for the moment;The curtain fell for a time; and I fancied We were again like gods together, Loving again with the old glad rapture.
But scenes like these, too often repeated, Failed at last, and her guile was wasted.
I made an end of her shrewd caresses And told her a few straight words.She took them Full at their worth -- and the farce was over.
.....
At first my dreams of the past upheld me, But they were a short support: the present Pushed them away, and I fell.The mission Of life (whatever it was) was blasted;My game was lost.And I met the winner Of that foul deal as a sick slave gathers His painful strength at the sight of his master;And when he was past I cursed him, fearful Of that strange chance which makes us mighty Or mean, or both.I cursed him and hated The stones he pressed with his heel; I followed His easy march with a backward envy, And cursed myself for the beast within me.
But pride is the master of love, and the vision Of those old days grew faint and fainter:
The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered Was nothing now but a woman, -- a woman Out of my way and out of my nature.
My battle with blinded love was over, My battle with aching pride beginning.
If I was the loser at first, I wonder If I am the winner now!...I doubt it.
My life is a losing game; and to-morrow --To-morrow! -- Christ! did I say to-morrow?...
Is your brandy good for death?...There, -- listen: --When love goes out, and a man is driven To shun mankind for the scars that make him A joke for all chattering tongues, he carries A double burden.The woes I suffered After that hard betrayal made me Pity, at first, all breathing creatures On this bewildered earth.I studied Their faces and made for myself the story Of all their scattered lives.Like brothers And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy Between those people and me.But somehow, As time went on, there came queer glances Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me Harassed my pride with a crazed impression That every face in the surging city Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers, Now and then, as I walked and wearied My wasted life twice over in bearing With all my sorrow the sorrows of others, --Till I found myself their fool.Then I trembled, --A poor scared thing, -- and their prying faces Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing At me and my fate.My God, I could feel it --That laughter! And then the children caught it;And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened.
And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert! I was their victim --And his, and hate's.And there was the struggle!
As long as the earth we tread holds something A tortured heart can love, the meaning Of life is not wholly blurred; but after The last loved thing in the world has left us, We know the triumph of hate.The glory Of good goes out forever; the beacon Of sin is the light that leads us downward --Down to the fiery end.The road runs Right through hell; and the souls that follow The cursed ways where its windings lead them Suffer enough, I say, to merit All grace that a God can give.-- The fashion Of our belief is to lift all beings Born for a life that knows no struggle In sin's tight snares to eternal glory --All apart from the branded millions Who carry through life their faces graven With sure brute scars that tell the story Of their foul, fated passions.Science Has yet no salve to smooth or soften The cradle-scars of a tyrant's visage;No drug to purge from the vital essence Of souls the sleeping venom.Virtue May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted And wound with the roots of vice; but the stronger Never is known till there comes that battle With sin to prove the victor.Perilous Things are these demons we call our passions:
Slaves are we of their roving fancies, Fools of their devilish glee.-- You think me, I know, in this maundering way designing To lighten the load of my guilt and cast it Half on the shoulders of God.But hear me!
I'm partly a man, -- for all my weakness, --If weakness it were to stand and murder Before men's eyes the man who had murdered Me, and driven my burning forehead With horns for the world to laugh at.Trust me!
And try to believe my words but a portion Of what God's purpose made me! The coward Within me cries for this; and I beg you Now, as I come to the end, to remember That women and men are on earth to travel All on a different road.Hereafter The roads may meet....I trust in something --I know not what....
Well, this was the way of it: --
