Classic Poem

" Your eye-light wanes with an ail of care,
Frets freeze gray your face and hair."

" I was the woman who met him,
Then cool and keen,
Whiling away
Time, with its restless scene on scene
Every day."

" Your features fashion as in a dream
Of things that were, or used to seem."

" I was the woman who won him:
Steadfast and fond
Was he, while I
Tepidly took what he gave, nor conned
Wherefore or why."

" Your house looks blistered by a curse,
As if a wraith ruled there, or worse."

" I was the woman who slighted him:
Far from my town
Into the night
He went. . . . My hair, then auburn-brown,
Pangs have wanned white."

" Your ways reflect a monstrous gloom;
Your voice speaks from within a tomb."

" I was the woman who buried him:
My misery
God laughed to scorn:
The people said: " 'Twere well if she
Had not been born! " "

" You plod to pile a monument
So madly that your breath is spent."

" I am the woman who god him:
I build, to ease
My scalding fires,
A temple topping the Deities"
Fanes of my sires."