Destroyers and Other Verses/My Tender Ways and Laughter

by Henry Head

 

My tender ways and laughter
Have gained me lovers twain.
I flouted the one, but the other
I bitterly love again.

One loved me for my great virtue;
I was sweet, and pure, and good.
He worshipped in me incarnate,
Mysterious womanhood.

To the other my soul lies open—
I never could play my part—
He thinks that virtue 's scarcely
The thing I've most at heart.

Paris, May, 1855.