Classic Poem

For grief I am about to sing,
Even as another would for joy;
Mine eyes which the hot tears destroy
Are scarce enough for sorrowing:
To speak of such a grievous thing
Also my tongue I must employ,
Saying: Woe 's me, who am full of woes!
Not while I live shall my sighs cease
For her in whom my heart found peace:
I am become like unto those
That cannot sleep for weariness,
Now I have lost my crimson rose.

And yet I will not call her lost;
She is not gone out of the earth;
She is but girded with a girth
Of hate, that clips her in like frost.
Thus says she every hour almost:—
‘When I was born, 'twas an ill birth!
O that I never had been born.
If I am still to fall asleep
Weeping, and when I wake to weep;
If he whom I most loathe and scorn
Is still to have me his, and keep
Smiling about me night and morn!

‘O that I never had been born
A woman! a poor, helpless fool,
Who can but stoop beneath the rule
Of him she needs must loathe and scorn!
If ever I feel less forlorn,
I stand all day in fear and dule,
Lest he discern it, and with rough
Speech mock at me, or with his smile
So hard you scarce could call it guile:
No man is there to say, “Enough.”
O, but if God waits a long while,
Death cannot always stand aloof!

‘Thou, God the Lord, dost know all this:
Give me a little comfort then,
Him who is worst among bad men
Smite thou for me. Those limbs of his
Once hidden where the sharp worm is,
Perhaps I might see hope again.
Yet for a certain period
Would I seem like as one that saith
Strange things for grief, and murmureth
With smitten palms and hair abroad:
Still whispering under my held breath,
“Shall I not praise Thy name, O God?”

‘Thou, God the Lord, dost know all this:
It is a very weary thing
Thus to be always trembling:
And till the breath of his life cease,
The hate in him will but increase,
And with his hate my suffering.
Each morn I hear his voice bid them
That watch me, to be faithful spies
Lest I go forth and see the skies;
Each night, to each, he saith the same:—
And in my soul and in mine eyes
There is a burning heat like flame.’

Thus grieves she now; but she shall wear
This love of mine, whereof I spoke,
About her body for a cloak,
And for a garland in her hair,
Even yet: because I mean to prove,
Not to speak only, this my love.