<h2> The Unforgiven </h2>
<p>When he, who is the unforgiven,<br/>
Beheld her first, he found her fair:<br/>
No promise ever dreamt in heaven<br/>
Could then have lured him anywhere<br/>
That would have been away from there;<br/>
And all his wits had lightly striven,<br/>
Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.<br/>
<br/>
There's nothing in the saints and sages<br/>
To meet the shafts her glances had,<br/>
Or such as hers have had for ages<br/>
To blind a man till he be glad,<br/>
And humble him till he be mad.<br/>
The story would have many pages,<br/>
And would be neither good nor bad.<br/>
<br/>
And, having followed, you would find him<br/>
Where properly the play begins;<br/>
But look for no red light behind him—<br/>
No fumes of many-colored sins,<br/>
Fanned high by screaming violins.<br/>
God knows what good it was to blind him,<br/>
Or whether man or woman wins.<br/>
<br/>
And by the same eternal token,<br/>
Who knows just how it will all end?—<br/>
This drama of hard words unspoken,<br/>
This fireside farce, without a friend<br/>
Or enemy to comprehend<br/>
What augurs when two lives are broken,<br/>
And fear finds nothing left to mend.<br/>
<br/>
He stares in vain for what awaits him,<br/>
And sees in Love a coin to toss;<br/>
He smiles, and her cold hush berates him<br/>
Beneath his hard half of the cross;<br/>
They wonder why it ever was;<br/>
And she, the unforgiving, hates him<br/>
More for her lack than for her loss.<br/>
<br/>
He feeds with pride his indecision,<br/>
And shrinks from what will not occur,<br/>
Bequeathing with infirm derision<br/>
His ashes to the days that were,<br/>
Before she made him prisoner;<br/>
And labors to retrieve the vision<br/>
That he must once have had of her.<br/>
<br/>
He waits, and there awaits an ending,<br/>
And he knows neither what nor when;<br/>
But no magicians are attending<br/>
To make him see as he saw then,<br/>
And he will never find again<br/>
The face that once had been the rending<br/>
Of all his purpose among men.<br/>
<br/>
He blames her not, nor does he chide her,<br/>
And she has nothing new to say;<br/>
If he were Bluebeard he could hide her,<br/>
But that's not written in the play,<br/>
And there will be no change to-day;<br/>
Although, to the serene outsider,<br/>
There still would seem to be a way.<br/></p>
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