The Flirt’s Tragedy

Here alone by the logs in my chamber,
&nbsp Deserted, decrepit -
Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot
&nbsp Of friends I once knew -

My drama and hers begins weirdly
&nbsp Its dumb re-enactment,
Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing
&nbsp In spectral review.

- Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her -
&nbsp The pride of the lowland -
Embowered in Tintinhull Valley
&nbsp By laurel and yew;

And love lit my soul, notwithstanding
&nbsp My features' ill favour,
Too obvious beside her perfections
&nbsp Of line and of hue.

But it pleased her to play on my passion,
&nbsp And whet me to pleadings
That won from her mirthful negations
&nbsp And scornings undue.

Then I fled her disdains and derisions
&nbsp To cities of pleasure,
And made me the crony of idlers
&nbsp In every purlieu.

Of those who lent ear to my story,
&nbsp A needy Adonis
Gave hint how to grizzle her garden
&nbsp From roses to rue,

Could his price but be paid for so purging
&nbsp My scorner of scornings:
Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me
&nbsp Germed inly and grew.

I clothed him in sumptuous apparel,
&nbsp Consigned to him coursers,
Meet equipage, liveried attendants
&nbsp In full retinue.

So dowered, with letters of credit
&nbsp He wayfared to England,
And spied out the manor she goddessed,
&nbsp And handy thereto,

Set to hire him a tenantless mansion
&nbsp As coign-stone of vantage
For testing what gross adulation
&nbsp Of beauty could do.

He laboured through mornings and evens,
&nbsp On new moons and sabbaths,
By wiles to enmesh her attention
&nbsp In park, path, and pew;

And having afar played upon her,
&nbsp Advanced his lines nearer,
And boldly outleaping conventions,
&nbsp Bent briskly to woo.

His gay godlike face, his rare seeming
&nbsp Anon worked to win her,
And later, at noontides and night-tides
&nbsp They held rendezvous.

His tarriance full spent, he departed
&nbsp And met me in Venice,
And lines from her told that my jilter
&nbsp Was stooping to sue.

Not long could be further concealment,
&nbsp She pled to him humbly:
"By our love and our sin, O protect me;
&nbsp I fly unto you!"

A mighty remorse overgat me,
&nbsp I heard her low anguish,
And there in the gloom of the calle
&nbsp My steel ran him through.

A swift push engulphed his hot carrion
&nbsp Within the canal there -
That still street of waters dividing
&nbsp The city in two.

- I wandered awhile all unable
&nbsp To smother my torment,
My brain racked by yells as from Tophet
&nbsp Of Satan's whole crew.

A month of unrest brought me hovering
&nbsp At home in her precincts,
To whose hiding-hole local story
&nbsp Afforded a clue.

Exposed, and expelled by her people,
&nbsp Afar off in London
I found her alone, in a sombre
&nbsp And soul-stifling mew.

Still burning to make reparation
&nbsp I pleaded to wive her,
And father her child, and thus faintly
&nbsp My mischief undo.

She yielded, and spells of calm weather
&nbsp Succeeded the tempest;
And one sprung of him stood as scion
&nbsp Of my bone and thew . . .

But Time unveils sorrows and secrets,
&nbsp And so it befell now:
By inches the curtain was twitched at,
&nbsp And slowly undrew.

As we lay, she and I, in the night-time,
&nbsp We heard the boy moaning:
"O misery mine! My false father
&nbsp Has murdered my true!"

She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it.
&nbsp Next day the child fled us;
And nevermore sighted was even
&nbsp A print of his shoe.

Thenceforward she shunned me, and languished;
&nbsp Till one day the park-pool
Embraced her fair form, and extinguished
&nbsp Her eyes' living blue.

- So; ask not what blast may account for
&nbsp This aspect of pallor,
These bones that just prison within them
&nbsp Life's poor residue;

But pass by, and leave unregarded
&nbsp A Cain to his suffering,
For vengeance too dark on the woman
&nbsp Whose lover he slew.