Chapter XXXIX

I said, I know not what; but far too proud,
Intoxicated though I was by love,
To let her view the folly of my fall,
I said not all I felt; but what I felt,
Beneath the first fierce humbling of the storm,
Floods o’er my memory yet with half the woe
That overwhelm’d me then. Am I, I thought,
So strong in love, and waiting long for it,
And always true to it, to be outweigh’d
By mere brute chaff of manhood, on the stage
Or in the pit? I swore ’twas ever so
With all her sex. Worth never weigh’d a straw.
A very satyr could outwoo a sage.—
Weak woman!—yet she must be weak—in brain
Or body. Better to be weak in brain!
She then, perchance, might serve a husband’s thought,
And wisdom’s voice might rule the family!
But were her moods too strong to serve his thought,
She might serve that in him which could not think.—
To wed she-brains, a man should seek to be
Commended as a fool!