YOU ask me where love fails me? -- what I hate? I cannot blame, for all, I hold, is fate; Yet there are hateful, unblameworthy things That sap life's nobler mercies at their springs; -- All deathward, pious-voiced uncleannesses; All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses. Time-serving pietists who lie for fame Sooner than hear no echo of their name; Souls readier to limit all we hallow By their own shallow thoughts, than deem these shallow. Perfidious power that no compunction knows; 'Cute cleverness that makes convenient shows; The devil-hearted insolence of sin That to its end through broken faith doth win; False woman who will fawn upon the neck Of wife whose hearth she warms her by to wreck; Some sneaking lover who for alien lust Will mock his home and soil his social trust; The sour, uncandid treasurer of offence, Who sneers down generous gift with common sense; All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses, All deathward, decent-garbed uncleannesses; -- These and the like keep very far from me, For all are lies, and all unsympathy. Love cannot move them though it suffocate, I do not blame -- I absolutely hate; Such things of folly, perfidy, and fiction Must be; but they shall have my malediction. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SPARKLING AND BRIGHT by CHARLES FENNO HOFFMAN A PUBLIC DANCE by JOHANNA AMBROSIUS ODE TO THE CONNECTICUT RIVER by JOSIAS LYNDON ARNOLD LE GUIGNON by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE THE WATERS OF H. BAPTISME by JOSEPH BEAUMONT MAXIMS FOR THE OLD HOUSE: THE PLASTER ON THE CHIMNEY by ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH ROMAN WOMEN by THOMAS EDWARD BROWN GLIMPSES OF ITALY: 2. THE CLOISTER GARDEN AT CERTOSA by RICHARD EUGENE BURTON |