Then I sank – knew ’twas quite a foredone thing

         That misery should be

      To the end!.. To get freed of her there was the one thing

         Had made the change welcome to me.

      To go there was ending but badly;

         ’Twas shame and ’twas pain;

      “But anyhow,” thought I, “thereby I shall gladly

         Get free of this forty years’ chain.”

      I thought they’d be strangers aroun’ me,

         But she’s to be there!

      Let me jump out o’ waggon and go back and drown me

         At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

      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.

      Still burning to make reparation

         I pleaded to wive her,

      And father her child, and thus faintly

         My mischief undo.

      She yielded, and spells of calm weather

         Succeeded the tempest;

      And one sprung of him stood as scion

         Of my bone and thew.

      But Time unveils sorrows and secrets,

         And so it befell now:

      By inches the curtain was twitched at,

         And slowly undrew.

      As we lay, she and I, in the night-time,

         We heard the boy moaning:

      “O misery mine!  My false father

         Has murdered my true!”

      She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it.

         Next day the child fled us;

      And nevermore sighted was even

         A print of his shoe.

      Thenceforward