YOU ask me where love fails me? -- what I hate? I cannot blame, for all, I hold, is fate; Yet there are hateful, unblameworthy things That sap life's nobler mercies at their springs; -- All deathward, pious-voiced uncleannesses; All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses. Time-serving pietists who lie for fame Sooner than hear no echo of their name; Souls readier to limit all we hallow By their own shallow thoughts, than deem these shallow. Perfidious power that no compunction knows; 'Cute cleverness that makes convenient shows; The devil-hearted insolence of sin That to its end through broken faith doth win; False woman who will fawn upon the neck Of wife whose hearth she warms her by to wreck; Some sneaking lover who for alien lust Will mock his home and soil his social trust; The sour, uncandid treasurer of offence, Who sneers down generous gift with common sense; All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses, All deathward, decent-garbed uncleannesses; -- These and the like keep very far from me, For all are lies, and all unsympathy. Love cannot move them though it suffocate, I do not blame -- I absolutely hate; Such things of folly, perfidy, and fiction Must be; but they shall have my malediction. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE QUESTION by PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY UPON THE LATE LAMENTABLE ACCIDENT OF FIRE ... by JOHN ALLISON (1645-1683) PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 77. AL-MUTAHALI by EDWIN ARNOLD THE BEACHCOMBER by MILDRED DOSCH BANTA A NEW PILGRIMAGE: 10 by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT SONGS OF THE SEA CHILDREN: 104 by BLISS CARMAN |