Page:The New Penelope.djvu/302

296 Between the poets, artists, critics, all,

Who form a faction or who found a school,

We weave Penelope's web with hearts of gall,

And my poor brain is oft the weary tool.

Yet do I choose this life. What is to me

Peace or good fame, away from all of these,

But living death? I do choose liberty,

And leave to Athens' dames their soulless ease.

The time shall come, when Athens is no more,

And you and all your gods have passed away;

That other men, upon another shore,

Shall from your errors learn a better way.

To them eternal justice will reveal

Eternal truth, and in its better light

All that your legal falsehoods now conceal,

Will stand forth clearly in the whole world's sight.

A REPRIMAND.

Behold my soul? She sits so far above you

Your wildest dream has never glanced so high;

Yet in the old-time when you said, "I love you,"

How fairly we were mated, eye to eye.

How long we dallied on in flowery meadows,

By languid lakes of purely sensuous dreams,

Steeped in enchanted mists, beguiled by shadows,

Casting sweet flowers upon loitering streams,

My memory owns, and yours; mine with deep shame,

Yours with a sigh that life is not the same.

What parted us, to leave you in the valley

And send me struggling to the mountain-top?

Too weak for duty, even love failed to rally

The manhood that should float your pinions up.