THIS is the last of all, this is the
last!
I must hold my
hands, and turn my face to the fire,
I must watch my dead days fusing together in
dross,
Shape after
shape, and scene after scene from my past
Fusing to one dead mass in the
sinking fire
Where
the ash on the dying coals grows swiftly, like
heavy
moss.
Strange he is, my son, whom I have
awaited like a
lover,
Strange to me like a captive in a foreign
country,
haunting
The confines and gazing out on the land where
the
wind is free;
White and gaunt, with wistful eyes that
hover
Always on the
distance, as if his soul were chaunting
The monotonous weird of
departure away from me.
Like a strange white bird blown out
of the frozen
seas,
Like a bird from the far north blown with a
broken
wing
Into our sooty garden, he drags and
beats
From place to
place perpetually, seeking release
From me, from the hand of my love which creeps
up,
needing
His happiness, whilst he in displeasure
retreats.
I must look away from him, for my
faded eyes
Like a
cringing dog at his heels offend him now,
Like a toothless hound pursuing
him with my will,
Till he chafes at my crouching persistence, and a
sharp
spark flies
In my
soul from under the sudden frown of his brow,
As he blenches and turns away,
and my heart stands
still.
This is the last, it will not be any
more.
All my life I
have borne the burden of myself,
All the long years of sitting in my husband’s
house,
Never have I
said to myself as he closed the door:
“Now I am caught! — You are hopelessly lost,
O
Self,
You are frightened with joy, my heart, like
a
frightened mouse.”
Three times have I offered myself,
three times rejected.
It will not be any more. No more, my son, my
son!
Never to know
the glad freedom of obedience, since
long ago
The angel of childhood kissed
me and went. I expected
Another would take me, — and now, my son, O my
son,
I must sit
awhile and wait, and never know
The loss of myself, till death comes, who cannot
fail.
Death, in whose service is nothing
of gladness, takes
me;
For the lips and the eyes of God are behind a
veil.
And the
thought of the lipless voice of the Father
shakes
me
With fear, and
fills my eyes with the tears of desire,
And my heart rebels with
anguish as night draws
nigher,