Eve

'While I sit at the door     Sick to gaze within     Mine eye weepeth sore     For sorrow and sin:     As a tree my sin stands     To darken all lands;     Death is the fruit it bore.     'How have Eden bowers grown     Without Adam to bend them!     How have Eden flowers blown     Squandering their sweet breath     Without me to tend them!     The Tree of Life was ours,     Tree twelvefold-fruited,     Most lofty tree that flowers,     Most deeply rooted:     I chose the tree of death.     'Hadst thou but said me nay,     Adam, my brother,     I might have pined away;     I, but none other:     God might have let thee stay     Safe in our garden,     By putting me away     Beyond all pardon.     'I, Eve, sad mother     Of all who must live,     I, not another     Plucked bitterest fruit to give     My friend, husband, lover -     O wanton eyes, run over;     Who but I should grieve? -     Cain hath slain his brother:     Of all who must die mother,     Miserable Eve!'     Thus she sat weeping,     Thus Eve our mother,     Where one lay sleeping     Slain by his brother.     Greatest and least     Each piteous beast     To hear her voice     Forgot his joys     And set aside his feast.     The mouse paused in his walk     And dropped his wheaten stalk;     Grave cattle wagged their heads     In rumination;     The eagle gave a cry     From his cloud station;     Larks on thyme beds     Forbore to mount or sing;     Bees drooped upon the wing;     The raven perched on high     Forgot his ration;     The conies in their rock,     A feeble nation,     Quaked sympathetical;     The mocking-bird left off to mock;     Huge camels knelt as if     In deprecation;     The kind hart's tears were falling;     Chattered the wistful stork;     Dove-voices with a dying fall     Cooed desolation     Answering grief by grief.     Only the serpent in the dust     Wriggling and crawling,     Grinned an evil grin and thrust     His tongue out with its fork.