You seemed to take no care; you felt no duty
To keep yourself an object of delight
For lover's-eyes; and appetite
And indolence soon wrought
Their devastating changes. You were not
The woman I had sworn to love and cherish.
If love is starved, what can love do but perish?
Now will you speak of my first fatal sin
And all that followed, even as I have done?

SHE

I must begin
With the young quarter of our honeymoon.
You are but one
Of countless men who take the priceless boon
Of woman's love and kill it at the start,
Not wantonly but blindly. Woman's passion
Is such a subtle thing--woof of her heart,
Web of her spirit; and the body's part
Is to play ever but the lesser role
To her white soul.
Seized in brute fashion,
It fades like down on wings of butterflies;
Then dies.
So my love died.
Next, on base Mammon's cross you nailed my pride,
Making me ask for what was mine by right:
Until, in my own sight,
I seemed a helpless slave