Explore "Love Despised" by Madison Cawein on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Can one resolve and hunt it from one's heart? / This love, this god and fiend, that makes a hell / Of many a life, in ways no tongue can tell, / No mind divine, nor any word impart.
Would not one think the slights that make hearts smart, / The ice of love's disdain, the wint'ry well / Of love's disfavor, love's own fire would quell? / Or school its nature, too, to its own art.
Why will men cringe and cry forever here / For that which, once obtained, may prove a curse? / Why not remember that, however fair, / Decay is wed to Beauty? That each year / Takes somewhat from the riches of her purse, / Until at last her house of pride stands bare?