I will not leave anything So mean as a promise to you. Nor with trifles, stand trembling And suffer penance Below your bastion box.
But I am now hard-put And sweet meats the dearer to me for it.
The lamps in the parlour are doused; She has emptied them of gas-- Critical, unforgiving crone! And left me alone in the house. Does she mean this be for good?
She has called me “disgraced” And thinks that her going Will “purge this taint” From my soul. But I shall go on as I have, Doing the right things At the wrong time, As is my genius, Until the chloral takes me, You forgive me, Or night falls.
This is the revised version of an original dream-poem, almost waking, about Lily Bart, heroine of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth