Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/107

While now, as though men played with fall and rise
 Of mere base monies of the common mart,
To-day they strove for love as for a prize,
  To-morrow compassed fame with every art;

And one who should but half trust any face
  Of seeming fame, or follow love too well,
To set his heart a moment in love's place—
  That man should fall,—yea, even as he fell.

And he thought how, since the first fate began,
  The lot of every one hath been so cast:
One woman bears and brings him up a man,
  Another woman slays him at the last;

While all so hardly leaguered are men's ways
  And love so sharp a snare for them contrives,
The fleeting span of one fair woman's days
  Sufficeth many heroes' loves and lives!

—But now, when he had thought all this and more,
  He lay there and yet moved not from his place;
The love of her was in him like a sore,
  And he lived waiting to behold her face.