* * * * *
But out of the woods as night grew cool
A brown pig came to the little pool;
It grunted and splashed and waded in
And the deepest place but reached its chin.
The tragedy in such love is the theme of Alfred Noyes' poem on Marlowe,
_At the Sign of the Golden Shoe_. The dramatist comes to London as
a young boy, full of high visions and faith in human nature. His
innocence makes him easy prey of a notorious woman:
In her treacherous eyes,
As in dark pools the mirrored stars will gleam,
Here did he see his own eternal skies.
But, since his love is wholly spiritual, it dies on the instant of her
revelation of her character:
Clasped in the bitter grave of that sweet clay,
Wedded and one with it, he moaned.
* * * * *
Yet, ere he went, he strove once more to trace
Deep in her eyes, the loveliness he knew,
Then--spat his hatred in her smiling face.
It is probably an instance of the poet's blindness to the sensual, that
he is often represented as having a peculiar sympathy with the fallen
woman.
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