Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands That Neptune strokes in lake and sea, With what high joy from stranger lands Doth thy old friend set foot on thee!...
"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!" ...
"I'll tell being past all praying for - Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me;...
"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, It will pass as your husband's with the rest, While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn Will be gleaming at us from east to west;...
"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; "And why?" asks the man she had that day wed, With a start, as the band plays on outside....
They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been Seems listening aloof, as to things past date....