The Birth of Jealousy by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

With brooding mien and sultry eyes, / Outside the gates of Paradise / Eve sat, and fed the faggot flame / That lit the path whence Adam came. / (Strange are the workings of a woman's mind.)

His giant shade preceded him, / Along the pathway green, and dim; / She heard his swift approaching tread, / But still she sat with drooping head. / (Dark are the jungles of unhappy thought.)

He kissed her mouth, and gazed within / Her troubled eyes; for since their sin, / His love had grown a thousand fold. / But Eve drew back; her face was cold. / (Oh, who can read the cipher of a soul.)

‘Now art thou mourning still, sweet wife? ' / Spake Adam tenderly, ‘the life / Of our lost Eden? Why, in _thee_ / All Paradise remains for me. ' / (Deep, deep the currents in a strong man's heart.)

Thus Eve: ‘Nay, not lost Eden's bliss / I mourn; for heavier woe than this / Wears on me with one thought accursed. / _In Adam's life I am not first_. / (O woman's mind! what hells are fashioned there.)

‘The serpent whispered Lilith's name: / ('Twas thus he drove me to my shame) / Pluck yonder fruit, he said, and know, / How Adam loved _her_, long ago. / (Fools, fools, who wander searching after pain.)

‘I ate; and like an ancient scroll, / I saw that other life unroll; / I saw thee, Adam, far from here / With Lilith on a wondrous sphere. / (Bold, bold, the daring of a jealous heart.)

‘Nay, tell me not I dreamed it all; / Last night in sleep thou didst let fall / Her name in tenderness; I bowed / My stricken head and cried aloud. / (Vast, vast the torment of a self-made woe.)

‘And it was then, and not before, / That Eden shut and barred its door. / Alone in God's great world I seemed, / Whilst thou of thy lost Lilith dreamed. / (Oh, who can measure such wide loneliness.)

‘Now every little breeze that sings, / Sighs Lilith, like thy whisperings. / Oh, where can sorrow hide its face, / When Lilith, Lilith, fills all space? ' / (And Adam in the darkness spake no word.)