To One Who Was Betrayed,

I need no spies to tell me all your thoughts,
I need no books to tell me how you grew,
I care not whence assembled all those naughts
To be that sad, aimed thing which is now you.

I care not from what hovel or what ghetto
You drew the precious sustenance of hate,
I care not with what knife, or what stiletto,
You plot to bring me down, or soon or late.

Already at the clap of your betrayal
I sank upon my knees and tasted dust,—
So pat and nice was that supreme portrayal
How cogently a man may break his trust;

How cogently a man may take a dagger
And place it 'twixt the shoulders of a friend,
And watch with glittering eyes the sudden stagger
Which was in this case, oddly, not the end.

You would forgive me that you did not slay me
And generously assume my love again,
On your broad bosom you would gravely lay me
And I should cup with you as other men.

I should forget that night we dined together
When every word I spoke you noted down:
When I unstalled my heart and loosed its tether
You were the aching ear of all the town.

You had been gulled by an unhappy woman
And packed with lies more tight than your own prose,
You had been gulled by a mad-witted woman
And you were led that night by your gulled nose.

She knew the weakness at your being's core
For I had told her of the pain in you,
She had but to brush in an easy door
To let that pain - now stench - bulk blindly through:

To let the stench in you annihilate
Reason and Honour, at a single blast,
To let the stench of your unreasoning Hate
Becloud your Self; and make a small man Vast.