The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered Was nothing now but a woman, -- a woman Out of my way and out of my nature.
My battle with blinded love was over, My battle with aching pride beginning.
If I was the loser at first, I wonder If I am the winner now!...I doubt it.
My life is a losing game; and to-morrow --To-morrow! -- Christ! did I say to-morrow?...
Is your brandy good for death?...There, -- listen: --When love goes out, and a man is driven To shun mankind for the scars that make him A joke for all chattering tongues, he carries A double burden.The woes I suffered After that hard betrayal made me Pity, at first, all breathing creatures On this bewildered earth.I studied Their faces and made for myself the story Of all their scattered lives.Like brothers And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy Between those people and me.But somehow, As time went on, there came queer glances Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me Harassed my pride with a crazed impression That every face in the surging city Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers, Now and then, as I walked and wearied My wasted life twice over in bearing With all my sorrow the sorrows of others, --Till I found myself their fool.Then I trembled, --A poor scared thing, -- and their prying faces Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing At me and my fate.My God, I could feel it --That laughter! And then the children caught it;And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened.
And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert! I was their victim --And his, and hate's.And there was the struggle!
As long as the earth we tread holds something A tortured heart can love, the meaning Of life is not wholly blurred; but after The last loved thing in the world has left us, We know the triumph of hate.The glory Of good goes out forever; the beacon Of sin is the light that leads us downward --Down to the fiery end.The road runs Right through hell; and the souls that follow The cursed ways where its windings lead them Suffer enough, I say, to merit All grace that a God can give.-- The fashion Of our belief is to lift all beings Born for a life that knows no struggle In sin's tight snares to eternal glory --All apart from the branded millions Who carry through life their faces graven With sure brute scars that tell the story Of their foul, fated passions.Science Has yet no salve to smooth or soften The cradle-scars of a tyrant's visage;No drug to purge from the vital essence Of souls the sleeping venom.Virtue May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted And wound with the roots of vice; but the stronger Never is known till there comes that battle With sin to prove the victor.Perilous Things are these demons we call our passions: