Slut

“ I wonder any Man alive will ever rear a Daughter! For she must have both Hoods and Gowns, and Hoops to swell her Pride, With Scarfs and Stays, and Gloves and Lace; and she will have Men beside; And when she's drest with Care and Cost, all tempting, fine and gay, As Men should serve a Cucumber, she flings herself away. Our Polly is a sad Slut! &c.
You Baggage! you Hussy! you inconsiderate Jade! had you been hang'd, it would not have vex'd me, for that might have been your Misfortune; but to do such a mad thing by Choice; The Wench is married, Husband. ”

“ The curse is not [Pg 69] to live, but to know we live. The curse is to be conscious and to will. Happily there is a remedy for these evils. Let us say no more; I await the lady whom I have never wronged, for never have I doubted but she was gentle and true-hearted, and I have learned by much pondering how peaceful and secure it is to slumber on her bosom. Many fables have been told of her bed and dwelling-places. But I have not believed the lies of the ignorant crowd. So it is, she cometh to me as a mistress to her lover, her brow garlanded with flowers and her lips smiling. ”

“ We so managed matters that we all came together or nearly so, and the women followed suit at the last final crisis, which was ushered in with wild cries of lust, and then a sudden overpowering silence fell on all as they lay panting in all the after-joys that follow the ecstatic discharge of life's essence. ”

“ Nay, I felt the 'clear keen joyance' of the lark that loves, but 'ne'er knew love's sad satiety.' Hitherto, the pleasure that women had given me had always jarred upon my nerves. It was, in fact, 'a thing wherein we feel there is a hidden want.' Lust was now the overflowing of the heart and of the mind—the pleasurable harmony of all the senses. ”

“ Then if you will have it so, may all the curses light upon you, women ought to fear, and you deserve!—First, may the curse of loving play attend your sordid covetousness, and fortune cheat you, by trusting to her, as you have cheated me; the curse of pride, or a good reputation, fall on your lust; the curse of affectation on your beauty; the curse of your husband's company on your pleasures; and the curse of your gallant's disappointments in his absence; and the curse of scorn, jealousy, or despair on your love ”

“ Good God! to think in what vain sacrifice I have offered up the best hopes, the fervent and young affections of my heart! Ask yourself; would the tears shed over the grave be half as bitter as those which you have shed over the unworthy? The loss of mistress or lover is little, compared with that of love! ”

“ Therewith she knew him for a lover who had lost his mistress and said, 'There is no power and no virtue but in God the Most High, the Supreme! O my son, I would have thee acquaint me with the particulars of thine affliction. Peradventure God may enable me to help thee against it, if it so please Him.' So he told her all that had happened and she said, 'O my son, indeed thou hast excuse.' And her eyes ran over with tears and she repeated the following verses:
Torment, indeed, in this our world, true lovers do aby; Hell
shall not torture them, by God, whenas they come to die! ”

“ Passion flickered, waned, and, on a pause of doubt and misgiving, tenderness dawned—tenderness, pity, remorse, regret, a growing horror and anguish, a growing knowledge of Heaven forfeited, of Hell made sure, a crescent terror, and dismay unspeakable, and under it all tenderness deepening, deepening, deepening, like a flood pressing against a barrier that it must at last break down. ”

“ I was too much under the habit of thinking of consequences; too English, too theatrical to believe that life does not deal in neat and finished endings. I could see nothing before me but the ugly conventional way of throwing mud at the woman and bringing you to an unjust and undeserved ruin, or the way most pleasing to my sentimentality, of withdrawing from the scene and leaving you to make the best of it; as, no doubt, you have done, since you are both successful personages and well in the limelight, and able to go triumphantly from honeymoon to honeymoon. ”

“ One hour's indulgence, one moment's confidence, might have brought her to your feet, to confess, not a crime, but a fact, 'which has been a covering to her eyes all the days of her life;' an accident which, in a fatal hour of weakness, she concealed; an accident which threw her into the power of those who, in hatred, or under the impulse of a guilty passion, sought to blight her peace, and ruin her virtue. That love which you doubt, in the place of a higher principle, saved her from guilt, and only left her a prey to the most protracted agony. ”

“ Dreams often more than waking passions move. Plead, Sleep, my cause, and make her soft like thee: That she is peace may wake and pity me. Thomas Campion [?—1619]
MATIN SONG Rise, Lady Mistress, rise! The night hath tedious been; No sleep hath fallen into mine eyes Nor slumbers made me sin. Is not she a saint then, say, Thoughts of whom keep sin away? Rise, Madam! rise and give me light, Whom darkness still will cover, And ignorance, darker than night, Till thou smile on thy lover. All want day till thy beauty rise; For the gray morn breaks from thine eyes. ”

“ To leave me here distracted with my Griefs, while my perfidious Husband, and the cursed she, that robs me of him, are perhaps, as happy, as their guilty Love can make them? Madam (answer’d he) ’tis but a Moment since they are met: A Moment! (interrupted she) a Moment is too much, the smallest Particle of undivided Time, may make my Rival blest, and vastly recompence for all that my Revenge can do. ”

“ No lover, longing for his loves, complaineth of desire, But with a doubled stress of woe my heart is overborne.
Of passion I complain to one who hath no ruth on me. How soul and body by desire are, one from other, torn!”
Then her eyes brimmed over with tears, and she wrote these verses also:
“Love-longing, the day of our parting, my body with mourning smote, And severance from my eyelids hath made sleep far remote. ”

“ Why cost thou heavily clog thy miserable soul with the sin of lust, which is fouler than any other, by putting away thy wife, and after her honourable death, by the base practices of thy shameless daughter? ”

“ Look! here’s the masterpiece I’ve made out of my sin, my manhood slain.
Art supreme! yet the world would stare, know my mistress and blaze my shame.
I have a wife and daughter — there! take it and thrust it in the flame. ”

“ I recognise with horror that infernal fascination which took from me the use of my reason, and which was not love even,—no, I yielded to the grossest, most degrading passion which can lower man to the level of a brute, to that passion which, to my shame and to yours, I desire to stigmatise aloud as lust, madame! ”

“ And now, palpably mistress of any size of man, and triumphing in my double achievement of pleasure and revenge, I abandoned myself entirely to the ideas of all the delight I had swam in. I lay stretching out, glowingly alive all over, and tossing with burning impatience for the renewal of joys that had sinned but in a sweet excess ”

“ No. Not yet. For a moment—a little lifetime—I have life, I Have lips and eyelids made for kisses. I have hands that burn to give caresses, and breasts that ache to take them. I have a body made to suffer the deep stings of love. This flesh of mine shall be a golden web woven of pain and joy.
She takes up the skull again.
You were alive once, and a virgin-martyr? You denied yourself love? You sent away your lover? No wonder you speak so plainly to me now. Back, girl, to your coffin! ”

“ Yet, I confess, no glamour of any earthly love has ever utterly dazzled me,—not even hers. Of imperfections, of mistakes, of sins, I knew she was guilty. I know it now,—even with the sanctity of those crimsoned mosses, and the hush of the rest beneath, so close to my heart, I cannot forget them. ”

“ Let fall two sparlding tears, as one who fears;
Draw forth a curling braid of woman's hair,
Lay it across his lips with swift caressing.
His love confessing: "My sweet beyond compare,
Whose fault we love to-day and hate to-morrow?" ”

“ That is what we all, even the grossest of us, in our heart of hearts are seeking. Lust seeks it; Love creates it; the miracle of Faith finds it—but nothing less, neither truth nor wisdom nor morality nor knowledge, neither progress nor reaction, can quench the thirst we feel. ”

“ As a brimming maiden, out-worn by her virginity, yields half-fainting to the dear sick stress of her desire—with just such faintings, wanton fires, does the soul, over-taxed by the continence of living, yield voluntary to the grave, and adulterously make of Death its paramour. ”

“ The bosom'd annals of my heart's fierce fire,
The martyr-throbs that now in night I veil:
And should the chill Time frown on young Desire.
Still, still some late remorse that breast may feel,
And heave a tardy sigh--ere love with life expire. ”

“ Yes—yes—we must surround our sovereign with all our love, all our affection, all our devotion—for bitter, bitter are the moments of solitary meditation experienced at intervals by our adored mistress. ”

“ In vain did her voices whisper to her: "Submit bravely to your martyrdom, not the shadow of a wrongful act stains the luster of your life. Yield not to vain shame, the shamefulness of it must fall upon your murderers. Face without a blush the looks of men—glory covers you with a celestial aureola—be strong of heart!"
In these moments of despair, the heroine became again the timid young girl whose intense modesty had caused her even to renounce the sacred joys of wifehood, and who had taken the vow of virginity to her saints. ”

“ The time I've lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light that lies In woman's eyes, Has been my heart's undoing. Though Wisdom oft has sought me, I scorn'd the lore she brought me, My only books Were woman's looks, And folly's all they've taught me. ”

“ But remember, thy life is not worth a week's purchase, neither is thy mistress's, forsooth, shouldest thou be witless enough to refuse. An ignominious death, a base exit for thyself—for her, madness and a speedy grave. ”

“ So he shed copious tears and repeated the following verses:
The lover is drunken with love of his fair; In longing and heat he redoubles fore’er.
Love-maddened, confounded, distracted, perplexed, No dwelling is pleasant to him and no fare.
For how, to a lover cut off from his love, Can life be delightsome? ’Twere strange an it were.
I melt with the fire of my passion for her And the tears down my cheek roll and never forbear. ”

“ What is love to a mistress, for example, but a pleasant emotion raised by a sight or idea of the person beloved, joined with desire of enjoyment? In what else consists the passion of resentment, but in a painful emotion occasioned by the injury, accompanied with desire to chastise the author of the injury? In general, as to every sort of passion, we find no more in the composition, but the particulars now mentioned, an emotion pleasant or painful accompanied with desire. ”

“ The youth in anguish bore the maid he lov'd,
But death and agony must shade the rest.
O scene of horror! Night of deep despair!
How each gay prospect, clad in fairest light,
Fades at the storm of grief, or cloud of care,
And sinks oblivious, in the gloom of night!
O bliss of earth! How bright and insincere;
Unworthy of the pains we all bestow! ”

“ Then she opened the bag and took out a lute, which she tuned, and sang the following verses, accompanying herself on the lute:
Thou art my wish, thou art my end; And in thy presence, O my friend,
There is for me abiding joy: Thine absence sets my heart a-flame.
For thee distraught, with thee possest, Thou reignest ever in my breast,
Nor in the love I bear to thee Is there for me reproach or shame.
Life’s veil for me was torn apart, When Love gat hold upon my heart;
For Love still rends the veils in twain And brings dishonour on fair fame. ”

“ A crushing sorrow, disappointment on the heel of disappointment, loneliness, or perhaps only a grey life full of petty cares passed in a scorching, withering climate—one or all of these things had dried the sap out of her, and left of what might have been a gracious creature, radiating pleasure and comfort, only the rags and bones of womanhood. ”

“ In gay luxuriance, charming every sense,
Ne'er, in thy absence, can delight my breast;
Nought, without thee, my weary soul beguiles;
And joy may beam, yet, midst her brightest smiles,
A secret grief is mine, that will not rest. ”

“ Love is done with and dead; if there lingers A faint and indefinite ghost, It is laid with this kiss on your fingers— A jest at the most. 'Tis a commonplace, stale situation, Now the curtain comes down from above On the end of our little flirtation— A travesty romance; for Love, If he climbed in disguise to your lattice, Fell dead of the first kisses' pain: But one thing is left us now ”

“ Without hesitation, the outcast bent her face, purified and celestial with love and sacrifice; bent it over the dreadful Thing, loathsome and decaying, beyond the semblance of human form or feature, on the bed,—bent and kissed, as a mother would have kissed. ”

“ For her, whose gaze was yet too dim to discern the glory of that Love, to gain one hour of which an eternity of earthly care and tenderness might well be battered, it was in truth a bitter thing to dwell in so chilling an atmosphere. ”

“ You hear the sound of one in sorrow sobbing—
I sing thus since my mood is thus. Believe me,
Madame, no hopeless love of you shall grieve me.
If they have said that I look pale and worn,
Time is at fault, not any woman's scorn. ”

“ Thus, when romance has ended in sorrow, and the Beautiful fades from the landscape, the trite and positive forms of life, banished for a time, reappear, and deepen our mournful remembrance of the glories they replace. ”

“ You run away and marry the first irresponsible scamp that asks you; you show no sign of repentance or feeling until you are in trouble; you come back, at my invitation, and are made as welcome here as if you had been the most dutiful daughter in the world, and then—THEN—you propose to bring fresh sorrow and disgrace upon the parent who lifted you out of your misery, and offered you a home, and forgot and forgave the past! ”

“ In the opening words, ‘Whoever hath her wish,’ the poet prepares the reader for the punning encounter by a slight variation on the current catch-phrase ‘A woman will have her will.’ At the next moment we are in the thick of the wordy fray. The lady has not only her lover named Will, but untold stores of ‘will’—in the sense alike of stubbornness and of lust—to which it seems supererogatory to make addition. ”