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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342084" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Leper</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">NOTHING is better, I well think,<br>Than love; the hidden well-water<br>Is not so delicate to drink:<br>This was well seen of me and her.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I served her in a royal house;<br>I served her wine and curious meat.<br>For will to kiss between her brows,<br>I had no heart to sleep or eat.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Mere scorn God knows she had of me,<br>A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,<br>Who plucked his clerk’s hood back to see<br>Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I vex my head with thinking this.<br>Yea, though God always hated me,<br>And hates me now that I can kiss<br>Her eyes, plait up her hair to see</div><div style="margin:10px 0">How she then wore it on the brows,<br>Yet am I glad to have her dead<br>Here in this wretched wattled house<br>Where I can kiss her eyes and head.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Nothing is better, I well know,<br>Than love; no amber in cold sea<br>Or gathered berries under snow:<br>That is well seen of her and me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:<br>First I take heart and think of this:<br>That knight’s gold hair she chose to love,<br>His mouth she had such will to kiss.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then I remember that sundawn<br>I brought him by a privy way<br>Out at her lattice, and thereon<br>What gracious words she found to say.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">(Cold rushes for such little feet—<br>Both feet could lie into my hand:<br>A marvel was it of my sweet<br>Her upright body could so stand).</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;<br>Now am I clean and whole of shame,<br>Nor shall men burn me in the face<br>For my sweet fault that scandals them.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I tell you over word by word.<br>She, sitting edgewise on her bed,<br>Holding her feet, said thus. The third,<br>A sweeter thing than these, I said.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">God, that makes time and ruins it<br>And alters not, abiding God,<br>Changed with disease her body sweet,<br>The body of love wherein she abode.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Love is more sweet and comelier<br>Than a dove’s throat strained out to sing.<br>All they spat out and cursed at her<br>And cast her forth for a base thing.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought<br>This curse to plague her, a curse of his.<br>Fools were they surely, seeing not<br>How sweeter than all sweet she is.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He that had held her by the hair,<br>With kissing lips blinding her eyes,<br>Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,<br>Sigh under him, with short mad cries.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Out of her throat and sobbing mouth<br>And body broken up with love,<br>With sweet hot tears his lips were loth<br>Her own should taste the savour of,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, he inside whose grasp all night<br>Her fervent body leapt or lay,<br>Stained with sharp kisses red and white,<br>Found her a plague to spurn away.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I hid her in this wattled house,<br>I served her water and poor bread.<br>For joy to kiss between her brows<br>Time upon time I was nigh dead.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Bread failed; we got but well-water<br>And gathered grass with dropping seed.<br>I had such joy of kissing her,<br>I had small care to sleep or feed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sometimes when service made me glad<br>The sharp tears leapt between my lids,<br>Falling on her, such joy I had<br>To do the service God forbids.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">‘I pray you let me be at peace,<br>Get hence, make room for me to die.’<br>She said that: her poor lip would cease,<br>Put up to mine, and turn to cry.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I said, ‘Bethink yourself how love<br>Fared in us twain, what either did;<br>Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?<br>That I should do this, God forbid.’</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, though God hateth us, he know<br>That hardly in a little thing<br>Love faileth of the work it does<br>Till it grow ripe for gathering.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Six months, and now my sweet is dead.<br>A trouble takes me; I know not<br>If all were done well, all well said,<br>No word or tender deed forgot.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Too sweet, for the least part in her,<br>To have shed life out by fragments; yet,<br>Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,<br>I might see something I forget.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Six months, and I still sit and hold<br>In two cold palms her two cold feet.<br>Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,<br>Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Love bites and stings me through, to see<br>Her keen face made of sunken bones.<br>Her worn-off eyelids madden me,<br>That were shot through with purple once.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She said, ‘Be good with me, I grow<br>So tired for shame’s sake, I shall die<br>If you say nothing:’ even so.<br>And she is dead now, and shame put by.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, and the scorn she had of me<br>In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.<br>I never should have kissed her. See<br>What fools God’s anger makes of men!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She might have loved me a little too,<br>Had I been humbler for her sake.<br>But that new shame could make love new<br>She saw not—yet her shame did make.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I took too much upon my love,<br>Having for such mean service done<br>Her beauty and all the ways thereof,<br>Her face and all the sweet thereon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Yea, all this while I tended her,<br>I know the old love held fast his part:<br>I know the old scorn waxed heavier,<br>Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It may be all my love went wrong—<br>A scribe’s work writ awry and blurred,<br>Scrawled after the blind evensong—<br>Spoilt music with no perfect word.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But surely I would fain have done<br>All things the best I could. Perchance<br>Because I failed, came short of one,<br>She kept at heart that other man’s.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I am grown blind with all these things:<br>It may be now she hath in sight<br>Some better knowledge; still there clings<br>The old question. Will not God do right?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Algernon+Charles+Swinburne">Algernon Charles Swinburne</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=342084" data-title="The Leper de Algernon Charles Swinburne" data-description="NOTHING is better, I well think,
Than love; the hidden well-water
Is not so delicate to drink:
This was well seen of me and her.

I served her in a royal house;
I served her wine and curious meat.
For will to kiss between her brows,
I had no heart..."></div>
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