She had the Scriptural word so scored on brain,
It rang through air to sky, and rocked a world

That danced down shades the scarlet dance profane;
Most women! see! by the man's view dustward hurled,

Impenitent, submissive, torn in two.
They sink upon their nature, the unnamed,

And sops of nourishment may get some few,
In place of understanding, scourged and shamed.

Barely have seasoned women understood
The great Irrational, who thunders power,

Drives Nature to her primitive wild wood,
And courts her in the covert's dewy hour;

Returning to his fortress nigh night's end,
With execration of her daughters' lures.

They help him the proud fortress to defend,
Nor see what front it wears, what life immures,

The murder it commits; nor that its base
Is shifty as a huckster's opening deal

For bargain under smoothest market face,
While Gentleness bids frigid Justice feel,

Justice protests that Reason is her seat;
Elect Convenience, as Reason masked,

Hears calmly cramped Humanity entreat;
Until a sentient world is overtasked,

And rouses Reason's fountain-self: she calls
On Nature; Nature answers: Share your guilt

In common when contention cracks the walls
Of the big house which not on me is built.

The Lady said as much as breath will bear;
To happier sisters inconceivable:

Contemptible to veterans of the fair,
Who show for a convolving pearly shell,

A treasure of the shore, their written book.
As much as woman's breath will bear and live

Shaped she to words beneath a knotted look,
That held as if for grain the summing sieve.

Her judge now brightened without pause, as wakes
Our homelydaylight after dread of spells.

Lips sugared to let loose the little snakes
Of slimy lustres ringing elfin bells

About a story of the naked flesh,
Intending but to put some garment on,

Should learn, that in the subject they enmesh,
A traitor lurks and will be known anon.

Delusion heating pricks the torpid doubt,
Stationed for index down an ancient track:

And ware of it was he while she poured out
A broken moon on forest-waters black.

Though past the stage where midway men are skilled
To scan their senses wriggling under plough,

When yet to the charmed seed of speech distilled,
Their hearts are fallow, he, and witless how,

Loathing, had yielded, like bruised limb to leech,
Not handsomely; but now beholding bleed

Soul of the woman in her prostrate speech,
The valour of that rawness he could read.

Thence flashed it, as the crimson currents ran
From senses up to thoughts, how she had read

Maternally the warm remainder man
Beneath his crust, and Nature's pity shed,

In shedding dearer than heart's blood to light
His vision of the path mild Wisdom walks.

Therewith he could espy Confession's fright;
Her need of him: these flowers grow on stalks;

They suck from soil, and have their urgencies
Beside and with the lovely face mid leaves.

Veins of divergencies, convergencies,
Our botanist in womankind perceives;

And if he hugs no wound, the man can prize
That splendid consummation and sure proof

Of more than heart in her, who might despise,
Who drowns herself, for pity up aloof

To soar and be like Nature's pity: she
Instinctive of what virtue in young days

Had served him for his pilot-star on sea,
To trouble him in haven. Thus his gaze

Came out of rust, and more than the schooled tongue
Was gifted to encourage and assure.

He gave her of the deep well she had sprung;
And name it gratitude, the word is poor.

But name it gratitude, is aught as rare
From sex to sex? And let it have survived

Their conflict, comes the peace between the pair,
Unknown to thousands husbanded and wived:

Unknown to Passion, generous for prey:
Unknown to Love, too blissful in a truce.

Their tenderest of self did each one slay;
His cloak of dignity, her fleur de luce;

Her lily flower, and his abolla cloak,
Things living, slew they, and no artery bled.

A moment of some sacrificial smoke
They passed, and were the dearer for their dead.

He learnt how much we gain who make no claims.
A nightcap on his flicker of grey fire

Was thought of her sharp shudder in the flames,
Confessing; and its conjured image dire,

Of love, the torrent on the valley dashed;
The whirlwind swathing tremulous peaks; young force,

Visioned to hold corrected and abashed
Our senile emulous; which rolls its course

Proud to the shattering end; with these few last
Hot quintessential drops of bryony juice,

Squeezed out in anguish: all of that once vast!
And still, though having skin for man's abuse,

Though no more glorying in the beauteous wreath
Shot skyward from a blood at passionate jet,

Repenting but in words, that stand as teeth
Between the vivid lips; a vassal set;

And numb, of formal value. Are we true
In nature, never natural thing repents;

Albeit receiving punishment for due,
Among the group of this world's penitents;

Albeit remorsefully regretting, oft
Cravenly, while the scourge no shudder spares.

Our world believes it stabler if the soft
Are whipped to show the face repentance wears.

Then hear it, in a moan of atheist gloom,
Deplore the weedy growth of hypocrites;

Count Nature devilish, and accept for doom
The chasm between our passions and our wits!

Affecting lunar whiteness, patent snows,
It trembles at betrayal of a sore.

Hers is the glacier-conscience, to expose
Impurities for clearness at the core.

She to her hungered thundering in breast,
YE SHALL NOT STARVE, not feebly designates

The world repressing as a life repressed,
Judged by the wasted martyrs it creates.