Vengeance

Woman with heart stabbed by a hidden wrong,
Whose vengeful fingers, proud, and tapering long,
Have strapped thy naked lover in his sleep
Down to the bed, where now his wild eyes weep
Their scalding tears like vitriol, and stare
On broken furniture and carpets where
Weapons, clothes, flowers are in mad medley cast,
In sheets still with his kisses warm, thou hast
To soldiers prostituted thee, and spent
Their vigour with thy body's vehement
Surging of spasms quivering under them;
But what thought, like a hideous diadem
Of thorns, hath rent thy forehead, when the third,
His white flesh scarcely sated, having heard
Thy lustful moaning till his heart grew sick,
Looked, as a bitch looks beaten with a stick,
To the black, frantic face of thy betrayer,
And asked with plaintive murmur: "Shall I slay her?"