Late Lyrics and Earlier: The Two Wives

The Two Wives

(SMOKER'S CLUB-STORY)

I waited at home all the while they were boating together -
      My wife and my near neighbour's wife:
   Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,
And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
      With a sense that some mischief was rife.
Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
      Was drowned--which of them was unknown:
   And I marvelled--my friend's wife?--or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
     --We learnt it was HIS had so gone.
Then I cried in unrest:  "He is free!  But no good is releasing
      To him as it would be to me!"
   "--But it is," said the woman I loved, quietly.
"How?" I asked her.  "--Because he has long loved me too without
ceasing,
      And it's just the same thing, don't you see."

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