Page:An epic of women and other poems (IA epicofwomenother00osha).pdf/140

And with the vision of them so deceived
  Came piteous memories of the waning face
Of the Old man who sat all shamed and grieved
  Lonely beside the hearth's familiar place.

Before her soon in very semblance gleamed
  The Spartan homestead there unaltered, plain,
With all the household things; yea, till she dreamed
  All were yet to begin that way again,

And Menelaus the next golden morn
  Were still to come for her with wedlock blest,
As though not all deserted and forlorn
  He strayed—the lone man without love or rest.

But most she yearned between her fear and love,
  To see him now—divining what was due
To wrath and sorrowing to change and move
  His features from the fashion that she knew:

For now the first time after all those years
  The face seemed anyhow her way to seek;
—But turned upon her now with all its tears
  And vengeance of reproach at length to wreak;