The Two Wives

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.”