LOVE AND SCORN.

Love, loyallest and lordliest born of things,

Immortal that shouldst be, though all else end,

In plighted hearts of fearless friend with friend,

Whose hand may curb or clip thy plume-plucked wings?

Not grief's nor time's: though these be lords and kings

Crowned, and their yoke bid vassal passions bend,

They may not pierce the spirit of sense, or blend

Quick poison with the soul's live watersprings.

The true clear heart whose core is manful trust

Fears not that very death may turn to dust

Love lit therein as toward a brother born,

If one touch make not all its fine gold rust,

If one breath blight not all its glad ripe corn,

And all its fire be turned to fire of scorn.

Scorn only, scorn begot of bitter proof

By keen experience of a trustless heart,

Bears burning in her new-born hand the dart

Wherewith love dies heart-stricken, and the roof

Falls of his palace, and the storied woof

Long woven of many a year with life's whole art

Is rent like any rotten weed apart,

And hardly with reluctant eyes aloof

Cold memory guards one relic scarce exempt

Yet from the fierce corrosion of contempt,

And hardly saved by pity. Woe are we

That once we loved, and love not; but we know

The ghost of love, surviving yet in show,

Where scorn has passed, is vain as grief must be.

O sacred, just, inevitable scorn,

Strong child of righteous judgment, whom with grief

The rent heart bears, and wins not yet relief,

Seeing of its pain so dire a portent born,

Must thou not spare one sheaf of all the corn,

One doit of all the treasure? not one sheaf,

Not one poor doit of all? not one dead leaf

Of all that fell and left behind a thorn?

Is man so strong that one should scorn another?

Is any as God, not made of mortal mother,

That love should turn in him to gall and flame?

Nay: but the true is not the false heart's brother:

Love cannot love disloyalty: the name

That else it wears is love no more, but shame.