t
With what strange tears!) it was not his, not his,
The kiss that through his quivering lips she met.

Kissing him, "_Thus_," she whispered, "_did he kiss.
Ah, is the sweetness like a sword, then, sweet?
Last night--ah, kiss again--aching with bliss,_

_Thus was I made his own, from head to feet._"
--A sudden agony thro' his body swept
Tempestuously.--"_Our wedded pulses beat_

_Like this and this; and then, at dawn, he slept._"
She laughed, pouting her lips against his cheek
To drink; and, as in answer, Marlowe wept.

As a dead man in dreams, he heard her speak.
Clasped in the bitter grave of that sweet clay,
Wedded and one with it, he moaned. Too weak

Even to lift his head, sobbing, he lay,
Then, slowly, as their breathings rose and fell,
He felt the storm of passion, far away,

Gather. The shuddering waves began to swell.
And, through the menace of the thunder-roll,
The thin quick lightnings, thrilling through his hell,

Lightnings that hell itself could not control
(Even while she strove to bow his neck anew)
Woke the great slumbering legions of his soul.

Sharp was that severance of the false and true,
Sharp as a sword drawn from a shuddering wound.
But they, that were one flesh, were cloven in two.

Flesh leapt from clasping flesh, without a sound.
He plucked his body from her white embrace,
And cast him down, and grovelled on the ground.

Yet, ere he went, he strove once more to trace,
Deep in her eyes, the loveliness he knew;
Then--spat his hatred into her smiling face.

She clung to him. He flung her off. He drew
His dagger, thumbed the blade, and laughed--"Poor punk!
What? Would you make me your own murderer, too?"

* * * *

"That was the day of our great feast," said Nash,
"Aboard the _Golden Hynde_. The grand old hulk
Was drawn up for the citizens' wonderment
At Deptford. Ay, Piers Penniless was there!
Soaked and besotted as I was, I saw
Everything. On her poop the minstrels played,
And round her sea-worn keel, like meadow-sweet
Curtseying round a lightning-blackened oak,
Prentices and their sweethearts, heel and toe,
Danced the brave English dances, clean and fresh
As May.
But in her broad gun-guarded waist
Once red with British blood, long table