“She Charged Me”

SHE charged me with having said this and that To another woman long years before, In the very parlour where we sat,—

Sat on a night when the endless pour Of rain on the roof and the road below Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .

—So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face, And her white forefinger lifted slow.

Had she done it gently, or shown a trace That not too curiously would she view A folly passed ere her reign had place,

A kiss might have ended it. But I knew From the fall of each word, and the pause between, That the curtain would drop upon us two Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.