Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/139

Back from the earliest love-time there was sent
  A tide of all the long untasted sweet
Of days forgotten, summers that were spent,
  And eves when love and lover used to meet;

And heavy wafts of perfume that was known
  E'en from those dark familiar laurel trees
That hid where love and lover were alone
  Rolled back upon the heart with sore disease:

And from the early home there came no less
  Than the reproach of each remembered gaze
Of friends, and want of all the happiness
  They gave her in their simple Spartan ways.

And now her heart strove, longing, to divine
  The several thoughts of her they had devised
In separate years that passed by with no sign;
  Yea, to have known their pain she would have prized:

For now when toward them her heart was wrought
  Quite weak, and from no tenderness forbore,
They seemed all strong against her, with hard thought
  And faces turning from her evermore.