YOU ask me where love fails me?--what I hate?
I cannot blame, for all, I hold, is fate;
Yet there are hateful, unblameworthy things
That sap life's nobler mercies at their springs;--
All deathward, pious-voiced uncleannesses;
All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses.
Time-serving pietists who lie for fame
Sooner than hear no echo of their name;
Souls readier to limit all we hallow
By their own shallow thoughts, than deem these shallow.
Perfidious power that no compunction knows;
'Cute cleverness that makes convenient shows;
The devil-hearted insolence of sin
That to its end through broken faith doth win;
False woman who will fawn upon the neck
Of wife whose hearth she warms her by to wreck;
Some sneaking lover who for alien lust
Will mock his home and soil his social trust;

The sour, uncandid treasurer of offence,
Who sneers down generous gift with common sense;
All cold, conceited, mouthing meannesses,
All deathward, decent-garbed uncleannesses;--
These and the like keep very far from me,
For all are lies, and all unsympathy.
Love cannot move them though it suffocate,
I do not blame--I absolutely hate;
Such things of folly, perfidy, and fiction
Must be; but they shall have my malediction.