Three Women
dying.  "The summer has come to an end And I wake from my dreaming," he mused.  "Wake to know That my place is not here—I must go—I must go. Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last, As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast. I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip, And he forces me now from his chalice to sip A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart Has been proud in its record of friendship. And now The mad, eager lover born in me must bow To the strong claims of friendship. I love Mabel Lee; Dared I woo as I would, I could make her love me. The soul of a maid who knows not passion's fire Is moth to the flame of a man's strong desire. With one kiss on her lips I could banish the nun And wake in her virginal bosom the one Mighty love of her life. If I leave her, I know She will be my friend's wife in a season or so. He loves her, he always has loved her; 'tis he Who ever will do all the loving; and she Will accept it, and still be the saint to the end, And she never will know what she missed; but my friend Has the right to speak first. God! how can he delay? I marvel at men who are fashioned that way. He has worshiped her since first she put up her tresses, And let down the hem of her school-girlish dresses And now she is full twenty-two; were I he A brood of her children should climb on my knee By this time! What a sin against love to postpone The day that might make her forever his own. The man who can wait has no blood in his veins. Maurice is a dreamer, he loves with his brains Not with soul and with senses. And yet his whole life Will be blank if he makes not this woman his wife. She is woof of his dreams, she is warp of his mind; Who tears her away shall leave nothing behind. No, no, I am going: farewell to Bay Bend I am no woman's lover—I am one man's friend. Still-born in the arms of the matron eyed year Lies the beautiful dream that my life buries here. Its tomb was its cradle; it came but to taunt me, It died, but its phantom shall ever more haunt me." 

 He turned from the waves that leaped at him in wrath To find Mabel Lee, like a wraith, in his path. The rose from her cheek had departed in fear; The tip of her eyelash was gemmed with a tear. The rude winds had disarranged mantle and dress, And she clung with both hands to her hat in distress. "I am frightened," she cried, in a tremulous tone; "I dare not proceed any farther alone. As I came by the church yard the wind felled a tree, And invisible hands seemed to hurl it at me; I hurried on, shrieking; the wind, in disgust, Tore the hat from my head, filled my eyes full of dust, And otherwise made me the butt of its sport. Just then I spied you, like a light in the port, And I steered for 
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