Explore "Kit Logan and Lady Helen" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Here is Kit Logan with her love-child come / To Lady Helen's gate: / Then down sweeps Helen from the Italian room, / She, with her child of hate.
Kit's boy was born of violent hot desire, / Helen's of hate and dread: / Poor girl, betrayed to union with the Squire, / Loathing her marriage bed.
_Kit Logan, who is father to your boy? _ / But Helen knows, too well: / Listen what biting taunts they both employ, / Watch their red anger swell.
Yet each would give her undying soul to be / Changed to the other's place. / Kit from the wet road's tasking cruelty / Looks up to silk and lace,
Helen looks down at rags, her fluttering pride / Caught in this cage of glass, / Eager to trudge, thieve, beg by the road-side, / Or starving to eat grass.
Silence. Wrath dies. For Woman's old good name / Each swears a sister's oath; / Weeping, they kiss; to the Squire's lasting shame, / Who broke the heart in both.