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The Leper

by Algernon Charles Swinburne

Nothing is better, I well think,

Than love; the hidden well-water

Is not so delicate to drink:

This was well seen of me and her.

I served her in a royal house;

I served her wine and curious meat.

For will to kiss between her brows,

I had no heart to sleep or eat.

Mere scorn God knows she had of me,

A poor scribe, nowise great or fair,

Who plucked his clerk's hood back to see

Her curled-up lips and amorous hair.

I vex my head with thinking this.

Yea, though God always hated me,

And hates me now that I can kiss

Her eyes, plait up her hair to see

How she then wore it on the brows,

Yet am I glad to have her dead

Here in this wretched wattled house

Where I can kiss her eyes and head.

Nothing is better, I well know,

Than love; no amber in cold sea

Or gathered berries under snow:

That is well seen of her and me.

Three thoughts I make my pleasure of:

First I take heart and think of this:

That knight's gold hair she chose to love,

His mouth she had such will to kiss.

Then I remember that sundawn

I brought him by a privy way

Out at her lattice, and thereon

What gracious words she found to say.

(Cold rushes for such little feet,

Both feet could lie into my hand:

A marvel was it of my sweet

Her upright body could so stand).

'Sweet friend, God give you thank and grace;

Now am I clean and whole of shame,

Nor shall men burn me in the face

For my sweet fault that scandals them.'

I tell you over word by word.

She, sitting edgewise on her bed,

Holding her feet, said thus. The third,

A sweeter thing than these, I said.

God, that makes time and ruins it

And alters not, abiding God,

Changed with disease her body sweet,

The body of love wherein she abode.

Love is more sweet and comelier

Than a dove's throat strained out to sing.

All they spat out and cursed at her

And cast her forth for a base thing.

They cursed her, seeing how God had wrought

This curse to plague her, a curse of his.

Fools were they surely, seeing not

How sweeter than all sweet she is.

He that had held her by the hair,

With kissing lips blinding her eyes,

Felt her bright bosom, strained and bare,

Sigh under him, with short mad cries.

Out of her throat and sobbing mouth

And body broken up with love,

With sweet hot tears his lips were loth

Her own should taste the savour of,

Yea, he inside whose grasp all night

Her fervent body leapt or lay,

Stained with sharp kisses red and white,

Found her a plague to spurn away.

I hid her in this wattled house,

I served her water and poor bread.

For joy to kiss between her brows

Time upon time I was nigh dead.

Bread failed; we got but well-water

And gathered grass with dropping seed.

I had such joy of kissing her,

I had small care to sleep or feed.

Sometimes when service made me glad

The sharp tears leapt between my lids,

Falling on her, such joy I had

To do the service God forbids.

'I pray you let me be at peace,

Get hence, make room for me to die.'

She said that: her poor lip would cease,

Put up to mine, and turn to cry.

I said, 'Bethink yourself how love

Fared in us twain, what either did;

Shall I unclothe my soul thereof?

That I should do this, God forbid.'

Yea, though God hateth us, he know

That hardly in a little thing

Love faileth of the work it does

Till it grow ripe for gathering.

Six months, and now my sweet is dead.

A trouble takes me; I know not

If all were done well, all well said,

No word or tender deed forgot.

Too sweet, for the least part in her,

To have shed life out by fragments; yet,

Could the close mouth catch breath and stir,

I might see something I forget.

Six months, and I still sit and hold

In two cold palms her two cold feet.

Her hair, half grey half ruined gold,

Thrills me and burns me in kissing it.

Love bites and stings me through, to see

Her keen face made of sunken bones.

Her worn-off eyelids madden me,

That were shot through with purple once.

She said, 'Be good with me, I grow

So tired for shame's sake, I shall die

If you say nothing:' even so.

And she is dead now, and shame put by.

Yea, and the scorn she had of me

In the old time, doubtless vexed her then.

I never should have kissed her. See

What fools God's anger makes of men!

She might have loved me a little too,

Had I been humbler for her sake.

But that new shame could make love new

She saw not, yet her shame did make.

I took too much upon my love,

Having for such mean service done

Her beauty and all the ways thereof,

Her face and all the sweet thereon.

Yea, all this while I tended her,

I know the old love held fast his part:

I know the old scorn waxed heavier,

Mixed with sad wonder, in her heart.

It may be all my love went wrong,

A scribe's work writ awry and blurred,

Scrawled after the blind evensong,

Spoilt music with no perfect word.

But surely I would fain have done

All things the best I could. Perchance

Because I failed, came short of one,

She kept at heart that other man's.

I am grown blind with all these things:

It may be now she hath in sight

Some better knowledge; still there clings

The old question. Will not God do right?