V

AND sometimes met with those who offered me

Comfort upholstered like a harlot’ s bed

With winks for ribbons, shrugs to swansdown wed,

And squalor under frowsy frippery.

This draggletail of passion should be mine,

This slattern bastard born of spleen and lust,

Convention’ s shrewd Bacchante, if I must

Yield to the senses’ feverish anodyne!

But I would turn, and, half-defeated, failing,

( How near defeat, they never guessed or knew,)

Load my last breath with scorn, and cry “You? You?”

And cry, at bay before their vanguard, railing,