The Story
of Saville
He thought to see if at last he awoke from his two years’ visionless trance
That she whom the fates had sent to him by a miracle’s happy chance
Was a goddess unparagoned, cinctured with cloud, divinely, immortally fair,
Sceptred and crowned with loveliness, a nimbus upon her hair,
Violets springing up under her feet—O God! O God! could she dare
Lift her Medusa-face to his own and harden it into despair?
A commoner, coarser-natured man might better have borne such blow,
But Kyrle to be gyved to this body of death,—Kyrle to be manacled so,—
Kyrle, with his artist’s vision for colors and contours trained,—
Kyrle, forsooth! And she laughed aloud, seeing what thing remained!
And ’twas not the physical stigma, the blot on the skin alone,—
That his spirit might soar above,—but Oh! he could never condone
Her wicked deceit of silence, her garbled superfluous lies,
