Submitted to by unelastic age!
One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
Break from beneath this icy premature
Captivity of wickedness--I warn
Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!
Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
I am past sin now, so shall you become!
Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"

He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
--Makes the due effort to surmount himself.

"I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
How he could read my purpose which, it seems,
He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
My purpose put before you fair and plain
Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!
Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
Any one told me--my own mother died
Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
You would not wonder surely if I knew,
By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.
So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
Make captive any visitor and scream
All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's
Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
Married or s