be, while this thing Is health and growth, and growing draws all life, All goodness, wisdom for its nutriment. Till it become a vision paradisic, And a ladder of fire for climbing, from its topmost Rung a place for stepping into heaven. ... This I have know, but had not. Nor have I Stood coolly off and seen the woman, used Her blood upon my palette. No, but heaven Commanded my strength's use to abort and slay What grew within me, while I saw the blood Of love untimely ripped, as 'twere a child Killed i' the womb, a harpy or an angel With my own blood stained. As a virgin shamed By the swelling life unlicensed needles it, But empties not her womb of some last shred Of flesh which fouls the alleys of her body, And fills her wholesome nerves with poisoned sleep, And weakness to the last of life, so I For some shame not unlike, some need of life To rid me of this life I had conceived Did up and choke it too, and thence begot A fever and a fixed debility For killing that begot. Now you see that I Have not grown from a central dream, but grown Despite a wound, and over the wound and used My flesh to heal my flesh. My love's a fever Which longed for that which nursed the malady, And fed on that which still preserved the ill, The uncertain, sickly appetite to please. My reason, the physician to my love, Angry that his prescriptions are not kept Has left me. And as reason is past care I am past cure, with ever more unrest Made frantic-mad, my thoughts as madmen's are, And my discourse at random from the truth, Not knowing what she is, who swore her fair And thought her bright, who is as black as hell And dark as night. But list, good gentlemen, This love I speak of is not as a cloak Which one may put away to wear a coat, And doff that for a jacket, like the loves We men are wont to have as loves or wives. She is the very one, the soul of souls, And when you put her on you put on light, Or wear the robe of Nessus, poisonous fire, Which if you tear away you tear your life, And if you wear you fall to ashes. So 'Tis not her bed-vow broke, I have broke mine, That ruins me; 'tis honest faith quite lost, And broken hope that we could find each other, And that mean more to me and less to her. 'Tis that she could take all of me and leave me Without a sense of loss, without a tear, And make me fool and perjured for the oath That swore her fair and true. I feel myself As like a virgin who her body
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