64
THE WOMAN I MET
"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
To their death;
But you deemed me chaste—me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
Could pace this street
Eyeing some man to greet?
"Well; your very simplicity made me love you
Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
Who grew my Cross;
For you'd only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
—What I suffered then
Would have paid for the sins of ten!
"Thus went the days. I feared you despised me
To fling me a nod
Each time, no more: till love chastised me
As with a rod
