Her paths are the paths of the sun;
    Her house is a beautiful light;
But she boweth her head, and is one
    With the daughters of dolour and night.

She is fairer than flowers of love;
    She is fiercer than wind-driven flame;
And God from His thunders above
    Hath smitten the soul of her shame.

She saith to the bloody one curst
    With the fever of evil, she saith
“My sorrow shall strangle thee first
    With an agony wilder than death!

“My sorrow shall hack at thy life!
    Thou shalt wrestle with wraiths of thy sin,
And sleep on a pillow of strife
    With demons without and within!”

She whispers, “He came to the land
    A lord and a lover of me—
A son of the waves with a hand
    As fearless and frank as the sea.

“On the shores of the stranger he stood
    With the sweetness of youth on his face;
Till there started a fiend from the wood,
    Who stabbed at the peace of the place!

“Because of the dastardly thing
    Thou hast done in the sight of the day,
All horrors that sicken and sting
    Shall make thee for ever their prey.

“Because of the beautiful trust
    Destroyed by a devil like thee,
Thy bed shall be low in the dust
    And my heel as a shackle shall be!

“Because” (and she mutters it deep
    Who curseth the coward in chains)
“Thou hast stricken and murdered our sleep,
    Thy sleep shall be perished with pains;

“Thy sleep shall be broken and sharp
    And filled with fierce spasms and dreams,
And shadow shall haunt thee and harp
    On hellish and horrible themes!

“I will set my right hand on thy neck
    And my foot on thy body, nor bate,
Till thy name shall become as a wreck
    And a byword for hisses and hate!”