hou, false hound! thou would'st not dare come back,
Thou would'st not like to feel my eyes again.
Go get thee on, to Argos get thee on;
And let thy ransomed Athens run to thee,
With portal arms, wide open to her heart--
To stifling hug thee with triumphant joy.
Thou canst not wear such bays, thou canst not so
O'erpeer the ancient and bald heads of honor,
That I would have the back or follow thee.
Let nothing but thy shadow follow thee;
Thy shadow is to thee a curse enough;
For thou hast done a murder on thyself.
Thou hast put on the Nessus' fiery hide.
Thou hast stepped in the labyrinths of woe,
And in thy fingers caught the clue to Death.
What solace have the gods for such as thou,
That is not stabbed by this one thrust through me?
From this black hour, this curse anointing hour,
The currents of thy heart are all corrupt;
The motions of thy thoughts are serpentine;
And thy death-doing and bedabbled soul
Is maculate with spots of Erebus.
Aye me!--and yet--Oh that I should say so!
Thou wast a noble scroll of Beauty's pen,
Where every turn was grandly charactered.
Hadst thou a heart--but thou hadst no such thing--
And having none, it was not thee I loved;
Only my maiden thoughts were perfect, Theseus.
O no, no, no, I never did love thee,
Thou outside shell and carcase of a man.
And I--what was it thou didst take me for?
A paroquet of painted shallowness?
A silly thing to whistle to and fro,
And peck at plums, and then be whistled off?
Oh, Theseus, Theseus, thou didst never know me--
In this unworthy clasp of woman's mould,
This poor outside of pliant prettiness,
There was a heart and in that heart a love,
And in that love there was an affluence
Full as the ocean, infinite as time,
Deep as the spring that never knew an ebb.
Too truly feeling what I left for thee,
And with what joy I left it all for thee,
And how I would have only followed thee,
With soul, mind, purpose, to the far world's end,
I cannot think on thee as thou deservest,
But scorn is drowned in a well of tears;
I will go sit and weep.--

Note.--Theseus, a Grecian hero, according to ancient fable,
made an expedition into Crete for the purpose of destroying the
Minotaur, a monster which infested that island. While there he
made love to Ariadn