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I TURNED—Heaven knows we women turn too much To broken reeds, mistaken so for pine That shame forbids confession—a handle I turned (The wrong one, said the agent afterwards) And so flung clean across your English street Through the shrill-tinkling glass of the shop-front—paused, Artemis mazed ’mid gauds to catch a man, And piteous baby-caps and christening-gowns, The worse for being worn on the radiator. . . . . .Propounding one sleek forty-shillinged law That takes no count of the Woman’s oversoul. I should have entered, purred he, by the door— The man’s retort—the open obvious door— And since I chose not, he—not he—could change The man’s rule, not the Woman’s, for the case. Ten pounds or seven days. . . Just that. . . I paid! |