Two Ways of Love.
52
It tells of prehistoric innocence,
And gaiety incredible! The smile
So merry-hearted. See! a dimple laughs
To greet the lovely curving of the lips;
And see, oh! see the white serenity,
The smooth and flawless beauty of the brow.
And that was Adrienne. You knew her. Ah!
Why should you wince? I face it every day,
This bright young innocence, and every day
I see the stain new fallen, every day
I know the horror indescribable
That came upon this unsuspecting soul.
For I was innocent! Then I awoke
To know myself a thing abhorred, and stained
A girl of seventeen, poor, unhappy child,
Who, when she stepped into the net outspread
My diabolic cunning, was as pure
Of every thought of sin as when she lay
A day-old infant in her Mother's arms.
And she, my Mother—ah! you think me hard
That even death cannot subdue my voice
To some inflection kindlier than this.
You shrink from me because I, standing here
A woman, and a daughter, cannot give
And gaiety incredible! The smile
So merry-hearted. See! a dimple laughs
To greet the lovely curving of the lips;
And see, oh! see the white serenity,
The smooth and flawless beauty of the brow.
And that was Adrienne. You knew her. Ah!
Why should you wince? I face it every day,
This bright young innocence, and every day
I see the stain new fallen, every day
I know the horror indescribable
That came upon this unsuspecting soul.
For I was innocent! Then I awoke
To know myself a thing abhorred, and stained
A girl of seventeen, poor, unhappy child,
Who, when she stepped into the net outspread
My diabolic cunning, was as pure
Of every thought of sin as when she lay
A day-old infant in her Mother's arms.
And she, my Mother—ah! you think me hard
That even death cannot subdue my voice
To some inflection kindlier than this.
You shrink from me because I, standing here
A woman, and a daughter, cannot give
