With the first pang, she knew the whole:
The loom’s behavior: how the edge
Once the thread pulled, raveled the mutual soul,
And how each night, with the night’s pledge

How to set, herself, the mutual task again.
He wove his piece with troubled eyes,
Astonished at the strands of pain
Until with practice he grew clumsy-wise.

She like an adept, quarreled and sang;
You might have joyed to see her face;
Lit by such zest from the first pang,
So poison-sure from the first embrace.

But both were broken-hearted—she
With a deadly touch she could not quit
Worked the design to the end, and he
Thought only he was to blame for it.

While she, so poison-ardent and so deft
Traced in their love fair picture of his pain;
Right hand the subtle assassin to her left:
Told all the mean geometry of her brain.

Judge here, you lyric and imitative lovers,
Who take emotions from a book by rote,
What brand of poison this was. Let who first discovers
Name for this evil, plan an antidote.