Part 2 — THE LETTERS
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Still on the tower stood the vane, A black yew gloomed the stagnant air; I peered athwart the chancel pane, And saw the altar cold and bare. A clog of lead was round my feet, A band of pain across my brow; "Cold altar, heaven and earth shall meet Before you hear my marriage vow."
I turned and hummed a bitter song That mocked the wholesome human heart, And then we met in wrath and wrong, We met, but only meant to part. Full cold my greeting was and dry; She faintly smiled, she hardly moved; I saw, with half-unconscious eye, She wore the colors I approved.
She took the little ivory chest, With half a sigh she turned the key, Then raised her head with lips compressed, And gave my letters back to me; And gave the trinkets and the rings, My gifts, when gifts of mine could please. As looks a father on the things Of his dead son, I looked on these.
She told me all her friends had said; I raged against the public liar. She talked as if her love were dead; But in my words were seeds of fire. "No more of love, your sex is known; I never will be twice deceived. Henceforth I trust the man alone; The woman cannot be believed.
"Through slander, meanest spawn of hell,— And woman's slander is the worst,— And you, whom once I loved so well, Through you my life will be accursed." I spoke with heart and heat and force, I shook her breast with vague alarms— Like torrents from a mountain source We rushed into each other's arms.
We parted; sweetly gleamed the stars, And sweet the vapor-braided blue; Low breezes fanned the belfry bars, As homeward by the church I drew. The very graves appeared to smile, So fresh they rose in shadowed swells; "Dark porch," I said, "and silent aisle, There comes a sound of marriage bells."
Alfred Tennyson [1809-1892]