The Flirt's Tragedy

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 she shunned me, and languished;      Till one day the park-pool     Embraced her fair form, and extinguished      Her eyes' living blue.     - So; ask not what blast may account for      This aspect of pallor,     These bones that just prison within them      Life's poor residue;     But pass by, and leave unregarded      A Cain to his suffering,     For vengeance too dark on the woman      Whose lover he slew.