On The Brink

I watch'd her as she stoop’d to pluck 
  A wild flower in her hair to twine; 
And wish’d that it had been my luck 
  To call her mine; 
 
Anon I heard her rate with mad,
  Mad words her babe within its cot, 
And felt particularly glad 
  That it had not. 
 
I knew (such subtle brains have men!) 
  That she was uttering what she shouldn’t;
And thought that I would chide, and then 
  I thought I would n’t. 
 
Few could have gaz’d upon that face, 
  Those pouting coral lips, and chided: 
A Rhadamanthus, in my place,
  Had done as I did. 
 
For wrath with which our bosoms glow 
  Is chain’d there oft by Beauty’s spell; 
And, more than that, I did not know 
  The widow well.
 
So the harsh phrase pass’d unreprov’d: 
  Still mute—(O brothers, was it sin?)— 
I drank, unutterably mov’d, 
  Her beauty in. 
 
And to myself I murmur’d low,
  As on her upturn’d face and dress 
The moonlight fell, “Would she say No,— 
  By chance, or Yes?” 
 
She stood so calm, so like a ghost, 
  Betwixt me and that magic moon,
That I already was almost 
  A finish’d coon. 
 
But when she caught adroitly up 
  And sooth’d with smiles her little daughter; 
And gave it, if I ’m right, a sup
  Of barley-water; 
 
And, crooning still the strange, sweet lore 
  Which only mothers’ tongues can utter, 
Snow’d with deft hand the sugar o’er 
  Its bread-and-butter;
 
And kiss’d it clingingly (ah, why 
  Don’t women do these things in private?)— 
I felt that if I lost her, I 
  Should not survive it. 
 
And from my mouth the words nigh flew,—
  The past, the future, I forgat ’em,— 
“Oh, if you ’d kiss me as you do 
  That thankless atom!” 
 
But this thought came ere yet I spake, 
  And froze the sentence on my lips:
“They err who marry wives that make 
  Those little slips.” 
 
It came like some familiar rhyme, 
  Some copy to my boyhood set; 
And that ’s perhaps the reason I’m
  Unmarried yet. 
 
Would she have own’d how pleas’d she was, 
  And told her love with widow’s pride? 
I never found out that, because 
  I never tried. 
 
Be kind to babes and beasts and birds, 
  Hearts may be hard though lips are coral; 
And angry words are angry words: 
  And that ’s the moral.