Explore "The Woman Speaks" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Why have you come? to see me in my shame? / A thing to spit on, to despise and scorn? -- / And then to ask me! You, by whom was torn / And then cast by, like some vile rag, my name! / What shelter could you give me, now, that blame / And loathing would not share? that wolves of vice / Would not besiege with eyes of glaring ice? / Wherein Sin sat not with her face of flame? / "You love me"? -- God! -- If yours be love, for lust / Hell must invent another synonym! / If yours be love, then hatred is the way / To Heaven and God! and not with soul but dust / Must burn the faces of the Cherubim, -- / O lie of lies, if yours be love, I say!