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• Lazy laughing languid Jenny,
• Fond of a freak and of a guinea;
• Whose head is on my knee tonight;—
• (Have all our waltzes left it light
• With those wild tunes?)—ah! Jenny, queen
• Of kisses which the blush between
• Could hardly make much daintier;
• Whose eyes are as blue skies; whose hair
• Holds the light globed like any shell:
• 10Fair flower, to fragrance reared so well
• Within Love's sultriest hotbed:—

• Nay,
• Blossom of the eternal May,
• Plucked and fouled and trampled on,
• Stemless, scentless, strengthless, gone;
• Even so, alas! or as it were
• A handfull of bright spring-water
• Flung in the whirlpool's shrieking face:—
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• Poor shameful Jenny, full of grace
• Thus with your head upon my knee,—
• 20Whose look, whose voice, whose memory,
• Whose purse is in your thoughts, ma vie?

• If of myself you think at all,
• What is the thought?—Conjectural
• On sorry matters best unsolved?—
• Or inly is each grace revolved
• To fit me with a lure?—or—sad
• As it may sound—you're merely glad
• That I'm not drunk or ruffianly
• And let you rest upon my knee?

• 30For sometimes, were the truth confess'd,
• You're thankful for a little rest.—
• From the crush to rest within,
• And from the sickness, and from the din
• Of women's envious mocking, which
• Mocks you because your gown is rich:
• And from the wise unchildish elf,
• Of schoolmate lesser than himself
• Looking, as you glide silently,
• 40Whether he knows what you may be,
• And then, in words well listened to,
• Teaching him lust and vice by you;
• But most from the beastliness of man
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• Who spares not to end what he began,
• Whose acts are foul and his speech hard,
• Who, having used you, afterward
• Thrusts you aside, as when I dine
• I serve the dishes and the wine.

• Well, handsome Jenny mine, sit up,
• 50I've filled our glasses, let us sup,
• And do not let me think of you,
• Lest shame of yours suffice for two
• What, still so tired? Well, well then, keep
• Your head there, so you do not sleep;
• But that the weariness may pass
• By bed-time, Jenny, take this glass.
• Ah! lazy lily hand, more bless'd
• If ne'er in rings it had been dress'd
• Nor ever by a glove conceal'd!

• 60Behold the lilies of the field,
• They toil not neither do they spin;
• So does the ancient text begin,—
• Not of such rest as one of these
• May earn. Another rest and ease
• Along each summer-sated path
• From its new lord the garden hath,
• Than that whose Spring in blessings ran
• Which praised the righteous Husbandman,
• Ere yet, in days of hankering breath,
• 70The lilies sickened unto death.

• What, Jenny, are your lilies dead?
• Aye, and the snow-white leaves are spread
• Like winter on the garden-bed.
• But you had roses left in May,
• They were not gone too. Jenny, nay,
• But must your roses die away?
• Even so; the leaves are curled apart,
• Still red as from the broken heart,
• And here's the naked stem of Thorns.

• 80Nay, nay, mere words. Here nothing warns,
• As yet, of winter. Sickness here,
• Or want, alone, could waken fear;
• Nothing but passion wrings a tear
• Except when there may come unsought,
• Haply, at times, a sudden thought
• Of her old days which seem to be
• Much older than any history
• That is written in any book;
• When she would lie in fields and look
• 90Along the ground through the thick grass,
• And wonder where the city was,
• Far out of sight, whose broil and bale
• They told her then for a child's tale.

• Jenny, you know the city now.
• A child can tell the tale there, how
• Some things which are not yet enroll'd
• In market-lists, are bought and sold
• Even till the early Sunday light,
• When Saturday night is market night
• 100Everywhere be it dry or wet,
• And market night in the Haymarket.
• Our learned London children know,
• Poor Jenny, all your mirth and woe:
• Have seen your lifted silken skirt
• Advertize dainties through the dirt;
• Have seen your coach-wheels splash rebuke
• On virtue; and have learnt your look
• When, health and wealth slipped past, you stare
• Along the streets alone; and there,
• 110Round the long park, across the bridge,
• The cold lamps at the pavement's edge
• Wind on together and apart,
• A fiery serpent for your heart.

• Let the thoughts pass, an empty cloud!
• Suppose I were to think aloud,—
• What if to her all this were said?
• Why, as a volume seldom read
• Opens half and shuts again,
• So the pages of her brain
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• 120Would part them at such words, and thence
• Close back upon the dusty sense.
• For is there hue or shape defin'd
• In Jenny's desecrated mind,
• Where all contagious currents meet,
• A Lethe of the middle street?
• Nay, it reflects not any face,
• Nor sound is in its sluggish pace,
• But as they coil, the eddies clot,
• And memory remembers not.

• 130Why, Jenny, you're asleep, I said
• At first that with that drowsy head
• You ought to have gone straight to bed.

• So, so she sleeps, How gently fair,
• With chin thus nestled in her hair,
• Mouth quiet, eyelids almost blue,
• As if some sky of dreams shone through.

• Just as another woman sleeps!
• Enough to throw one's thoughts in heaps
• Of doubt and horror,—what to say
• 140Or think—this awful secret sway,
• The potter's power over the clay!
• Of the same lump—it has been said—
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• My cousin Nell is fond of fun,
• And fond of dress, and change, and praise,—
• So mere a woman in her ways:
• And if her full eyes rich in youth
• Are like her lips that tell the truth,
• 150My cousin Nell is fond of love—
• And she's the girl I'm proudest of
• Who does not prize her—guard her well?
• The love of change, in cousin Nell,
• Shall find the best and hold it dear:
• The unconquered mirth turn quieter
• Not through her own, through others' woe:
• The conscious pride of beauty glow
• Beside another's pride in her,
• One little part of all they share.
• 160For Love himself shall ripen these
• In a kind soil to just increase
• Through years of fertilizing peace.

• Of the same lump—as it is said—
• For honour and dishonour made,
• Two sister vessels. Here is one.

• It makes a goblin of the sun.

• So pure, so fallen! How dare to think
• Of the first common kindred link?
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• Yet, Jenny, till the world shall burn
• It seems that all things take their turn.
• 170And who shall say but this fair tree
• May need, in changes that may be,
• Your children's children's charity?
• Scorned then, no doubt, as you are scorned!
• Shall no man hold his pride forewarned
• Till in the end, the Day of Days,
• At Judgment, one of his own race,
• As frail and lost as yore, shall rise,
• His daughter, with his mother's eyes?

• Each of such curdled lives alike
• 180A life for which my twelve hours strike
• And Time must be and Time must end.
• Hard to see singly! What might tend
• To give to each clear presence? Well,
• Remember it is possible,
• Whether I please or do not please,
• That in the making each of these
• A separate man has lost his soul

• Fair shines the gilded aureole
• In which our highest painters place
• 190Some living woman's simple face.
• And the still'd features thus descried
• As Jenny's long throat droops aside,—
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• The patient underlip drawn in,
• The shadows where the cheeks are thin
• And pure wide curve from ear to chin,—
• With Giotto's or Giorgione's hand
• To show them to men's souls,—might stand,
• The whole world long, the whole earth through,
• For preachings of what God can do.
• 200What has man done here? How atone,
• Great God, for this which man has done?
• And for the body and soul which by
• Man's pitiless doom must now comply
• With lifelong hell, what lullaby
• Of sweet forgetful second birth
• Remains? All dark. No sign on earth
• What measure of God's rest endows
• The many mansions of His house.

• If but a woman's heart might see
• 210This erring heart unerringly
• For once! But that can never be.

• Like a rose shut in a book
• In which pure women may not look,
• For its base pages claim control
• To crush the flower within the soul;
• Where through each dead rose leaf that clings,
• Pale as transparent psyche-wings,
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• To the vile text, are traced such things
• As might make lady's cheek indeed
• 220More than a living rose to read;
• So nought save foolish foulness may
• Watch with hard eyes the sure decay;
• And so the life-blood of this rose,
• Puddled with filthy knowledge, grows
• Through leaves no chaste hand may unclose:
• Yet still it keeps such faded show
• Of when 'twas gathered long ago,
• That the crushed petals' lovely grain,
• The sweetness of the sanguine stain,
• 230Seen of a woman's eyes, must make
• Her pitiful heart, so prone to ache,
• Love roses better for its sake:—
• Only that this can never be:—
• So are you to your sex, ma vie.

• But truly, looking long at you,
• The woman almost fades from view.
• A cypher of man's changeless sum
• Of lust, past, present, and to come,
• Is left. A riddle that one shrinks
• 240To challenge from the scornful sphynx.

• Like a toad within a stone
• Seated while Time crumbles on;
• Which has sat there since earth was curs'd
• When man's seed sinned at the first;
• Which, living through all centuries,
• Not once has seen the sun arise;
• Whose life, to its cold circle charmed,
• The earth's whole summers have not warmed;
• And which still—whitherso the stone
• 250Be cast—sits there, deaf, blind, alone;—
• Ah! and shall not be driven out
• Till the flint wrapping him about
• Break at the very Master's stroke
• And the dust thereof vanish as smoke
• When in the lamp the flame doth fail:—
• So are you in this world, ma belle.

• Come, come, what use in thoughts like this?
• I meant a woman good to kiss
• To night should yield me something more
• 260Than bloodless perking metaphor.
• Jenny, wake up. Why, there's the Dawn.

• And there's an early waggon, drawn
• To market; and some sheep that jog
• Bleating before a barking dog;
• And all as ghostlike as the lamps,

• So on the wings of day decamps
• My last night's folly. Let her sleep.
• Will it not wake her, though, to heap
• These cushions underneath her head
• 270Where my knee was? No: there's your bed,
• My Jenny, while you dream. And there
• I lay among your outspread hair
• Perhaps the subject of your dreams,
• These golden coins.

• For still it seems
• That in my Jenny's sleep, there stirs
• A spell around the magic purse,—
• Grim web, how clogged with shrivelled flies!
• Between the threads fine fumes arise
• And shape their pictures in the brain
• There roll no streets in glare and rain
• 280Nor flagrant man-swine whets his tusk;
• But delicately sighs in musk
• The homage of the dim boudoir;
• Or like a palpitating star
• Thrilled into song, the Opera-night
• Breathes faint in the quick pulse of light;
• Or at the carriage-window shine
• Rich wares for choice; or, free to dine,
• Whirls through its hour of health the Park
• And though in the discounted dark
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• 290Her functions there and here are one,—
• Beneath the lamps and in the sun
• At least there reigns the explicit belle,
• Apparelled beyond parallel.
• Ah Jenny, yes, we know your dreams.

• For even the Paphian Venus seems
• A goddess o'er the realms of love,
• When shrined, of silver, in some grove:
• Aye, or let offerings nicely plac'd
• But heap Priapus to the waist,
• 300And whoso looks on him shall see
• An eligible deity.

• Well, Jenny, waking here alone
• May help you to remember one.
• I think I see you when you wake,
• And rub your eyes for me, and shake
• My gold, in rising, from your hair,
• A Danaë for a moment there.

• And so I must talk lightly still,
• Ashamed to feel ashamed. Until
• 310To-night no thoughts not born amiss
• Rose at a poor fair face like this.
• If others come for once, I know
• In my life, as in hers, they show,
• By a far gleam which I may near,
• A dark path I can strive to clear.

• Only one kiss. Goodbye, my dear.