Page:Poet Lore, volume 1, 1889.djvu/27
minds? Do I suspect something like a pitying sneer for any one who could thus become passion's slave? Doubt or sneer as you will, I tell you that where a woman is concerned, if a man fears dishonor or poverty, death or hell, he does not love her as I have seen women loved, and that more times than twice.
Great, say you, must be the guerdon, rich the return, for such a love. Alas! No! There is the irony of it. Have you read Prévost's "Manon Lescaut," Mürger's "Le Testament," Daudet's "Sappho"? Bad French novels, you will say. No, I reply, all true histories—too true—of men who wasted wealths of love—truest, best of love—on objects incapable as stocks or stones of appreciating or returning it.
Does the poet whom we are studying bear me out in this? Judge for yourselves. Let me read you a part of what seems almost an autobiographic poem, that one called "Time's Revenges":
Call my thoughts false and my fancies quaint,
My style infirm and its figures faint,
All the critics say, and more blame yet,
And not one angry word you get.
But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady's foot,
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends!
I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret crowned with love's best crown
And feasted with love's perfect feast,
To think I kill for her at least
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim,
—So is my spirit as flesh with sin
Filled full, eaten out and in
With the face of her, the eyes of her,
The lips, the little chin, the stir
Of shadow round her mouth; and she
—I'll tell you—calmly would decree
That I should roast at a slow fire
If that would compass her desire,
And make her one whom they invite
To the famous ball to-morrow night.