I
INTO the shadow-white chamber silts
the white
Flux of
another dawn. The wind that all night
Long has waited restless, suddenly
wafts
A whirl like
snow from the plum-trees and the pear,
Till petals heaped between the
window-shafts
In
a drift die there.
A nurse in white, at the dawning,
flower-foamed
pane
Draws down the blinds, whose shadows
scarcely
stain
The white rugs on the floor, nor the silent
bed
That rides the
room like a frozen berg, its crest
Finally ridged with the austere line of the
dead
Stretched
out at rest.
Less than a year the fourfold feet
had pressed
The
peaceful floor, when fell the sword on their rest.
Yet soon, too soon, she had him
home again
With
wounds between them, and suffering like a
guest
That will not go. Now suddenly going, the
pain
Leaves
an empty breast.
II
A tall woman, with her long white
gown aflow
As she
strode her limbs amongst it, once more
She hastened towards the room. Did she
know
As she listened
in silence outside the silent door?
Entering, she saw him in outline, raised on a
pyre
Awaiting
the fire.
Upraised on the bed, with feet erect
as a bow,
Like the
prow of a boat, his head laid back like the
stern
Of a ship that stands in a shadowy sea of
snow
With frozen
rigging, she saw him; she drooped like
a fern
Refolding, she slipped to the
floor as a ghost-white
peony slips
When
the thread clips.
Soft she lay as a shed flower
fallen, nor heard
The ominous entry, nor saw the other love,
The dark, the grave-eyed
mistress who thus dared
At such an hour to lay her claim,
above
A stricken
wife, so sunk in oblivion, bowed
With
misery, no more proud.
III
The stranger’s hair was shorn like a
lad’s dark poll
And
pale her ivory face: her eyes would fail
In silence when she looked: for
all the whole
Darkness of failure was in them, without avail.
Dark in indomitable failure,
she who had lost
Now
claimed the host,
She softly passed the sorrowful
flower shed
In
blonde and white on the floor, nor even turned
Her head aside, but straight
towards the bed
Moved with slow feet, and her eyes’ flame steadily
burned.
She looked at him as he lay with banded
cheek,
And
she started to speak
Softly: “I knew it would come to
this,” she said,
“I
knew that some day, soon, I should find you thus.
So I did not fight you. You
went your way instead
Of coming mine — and of the two of
us
I died the first,
I, in the after-life
Am
now your wife.”
IV
“‘Twas I whose fingers did draw up
the young
Plant of
your body: to me you looked e’er sprung
The secret of the moon within
your eyes!
My mouth
you met before your fine red mouth
Was set to song — and never your song
denies
My
love, till you went south.”
“‘Twas I who placed the bloom of
manhood on
Your
youthful smoothness: I fleeced where fleece
was
none
Your fervent
limbs with flickers and tendrils of new
Knowledge; I set your heart to
its stronger beat;
I
put my strength upon you, and I threw
My
life at your feet.”
“But I whom the years had reared to
be your bride,
Who
for years was sun for your shivering, shade for
your
sweat,
Who for one
strange year was as a bride to you — you
set me
aside
With all the
old, sweet things of our youth; — and
never yet
Have I ceased to grieve that I
was not great enough
To
defeat your baser stuff.”
V
“But you are given back again to
me
Who have kept
intact for you your virginity.
Who for the rest of life walk out of
care,
Indifferent
here of myself, since I am gone
Where you are gone, and you and I out
there
Walk
now as one.”
“Your widow am I, and only I. I
dream
God bows his
head and grants me this supreme
Pure look of your last dead face, whence now is
gone
The mobility,
the panther’s gambolling,
And all your being is given to me, so
none
Can
mock my struggling.”
“And now at last I kiss your perfect
face,
Perfecting now
our unfinished, first embrace.
Your young hushed look that then saw God
ablaze
In every
bush, is given you back, and we
Are met at length to finish our rest of
days
In
a unity.”