A fortnight past you looked at me and lied:
Then my heart fainted, and I thought it died.
But O, that engine's not so simply stilled
Burns you for fuel, so I was not killed!
It was the moment, not myself, was slain,
And faith grew crescent in the mind again.
Then did I seek, according to my use,
Your full, sufficient, and extreme excuse
For having varied, by a hair's breadth span,
From your true character of god in man.
Through the dispersing vertigo of trance
I fixed my eyes upon your countenance,
Which is, to me, the elemental stuff
Of beauty perfected, and the mask put off;
And, in the deeps and colours of your eyes,
I saw the inverted images of lies
I tell you daily; yea, I saw them all,
Careless, case-hardened, and habitual.
Preposterous falsehoods, legendary oaths,
Transparent and disprovable untruths,
And idle tales at which an infant smiles,
And histories far-fetched a million miles.
To blame you for a fault were insolence
Upon my part, who multiply by tens
The initial crime that I condemn you for,
And, in an hour, contrive you twenty more.
For, while my soul protested and cried hush,
Have I not sworn to you without a blush
When I was ill, that I was very well?
That I was blessed, when most miserable?
And, while my teeth have chattered in my head
With cold, and sick desire to be dead,
Have I not checked my shivering and sworn
I lay in damask leaves without a thorn?
Have I not vowed, before I starved and swooned,
That you were ointment to my every wound,
And food and physic, and a crumb too much?
And have I not declared you such and such
And this and that, and all the tale untrue?
And have I never said I trusted you
Around the corner, world without an end,
To remain my lover and my loving friend?
Your constancy the stars', and not the moon's:
And I would trust you with my silver spoons!
O then, my darling, how have you deserved
The least reproach for having lightly swerved
By a width of spider's web, a honey bee's
Hair's breadth, or thread of silken eyelashes,
From the iron line of strict veracity,
And, by my faith, from such a liar as I?